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Shuttle Launch facts

While investigating facts about Shuttle Launch Today and Shuttle Launch May 27, I found out little known, but curios details like:

Most of the smoke billowing up from a space shuttle launch is not exhaust. It is water vapor from the pool of water under the shuttle designed to absorb the acoustic shock waves that could otherwise tear the shuttle apart.

how many space shuttle launches were there?

John Davis, creator of The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius, was invited to see the last shuttle launch. Two guys at the launch approached him and asked if he created the show. After confirming to them that he did, they replied, "You're the reason we went to work for NASA!"

What channel is the space shuttle launch on?

In my opinion, it is useful to put together a list of the most interesting details from trusted sources that I've come across answering what time is the space shuttle launch. Here are 50 of the best facts about Shuttle Launch Live and Shuttle Launch Schedule I managed to collect.

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  1. Most of the smoke billowing up from a space shuttle launch is not exhaust. It is water vapor from the pool of water under the shuttle designed to absorb the acoustic shock waves that could otherwise tear the shuttle apart.

  2. One of the last procedures before a space shuttle launch is to remove the inflatable owls from the aircraft.

  3. Big Bird was supposed to be launched into space to encourage kid's interest in space/NASA. Instead they went with a teacher named Christa McAuliffe, who unfortunately died when the Challenger Space Shuttle exploded during take off.

  4. The last Shuttle flight STS-134 was delayed after an engineer committed suicide by throwing himself off the launch pad.

  5. In 2009, just in case Space Shuttle Atlantis was damaged while working on the Hubble, Endeavor was readied to launch a rescue mission. This was one of the few times both shuttle launch pads were occupied.

  6. In the early days of the Space Shuttle program, NASA aimed for 60 launches a year. By the end, the average was only 6.

  7. During a Space Shuttle launch abort in 1984, leaking hydrogen was causing a fire invisible to human eyes. If the astronauts had evacuated according to emergency procedure, they would have been incinerated by it.

  8. NASA wouldn't launch the space shuttle if the mission ran from December to January because the on board computers were not designed to handle the end if year rollover.

  9. The giant white clouds that billow around the space shuttle at each launch are not smoke. They are water vapor from the pool of water under the shuttle designed to absorb the acoustic shock waves that could otherwise tear the shuttle apart.

  10. After the launch of STS-70, NASA had installed plastic owls on and around the space shuttle to prevent woodpeckers from boring holes in the insulation of the external fuel tank.

shuttle launch facts
What time is the shuttle launch?

Shuttle Launch data charts

For your convenience take a look at Shuttle Launch figures with stats and charts presented as graphic.

shuttle launch fact data chart about NASA Space Shuttle Mission Launch Dates and NASA Annual Budg
NASA Space Shuttle Mission Launch Dates and NASA Annual Budget

Why is there no more space shuttle launches?

You can easily fact check why does the space shuttle launch upside down by examining the linked well-known sources.

The Space Shuttle Challenger disaster was not only far from a freak accident, but that some believed the failure would be an absolute certainty, with Engineer Bob Ebeling telling his wife the night before the launch: "It's going to blow up."

Before a space shuttle could launch weather conditions such as precipitation, lightning, wind, and humidity were strongly considered.

Potato is the first plant that was launched and successfully grown inside the space shuttle in 1995.

Barbara Morgan, the backup teacher for NASA Space Shuttle mission STS-51L (Challenger), who watched from the ground as the crew she had trained with died in an explosion just after launch.

Most space shuttle launches occurred during the day time.

When was the last space shuttle launch?

The Hubble Space Telescope was launched into orbit by the Space Shuttle.

How to watch space shuttle launch live?

A man named Roger Boisjoly and his colleagues tried to stop the Space Shuttle Challenger from launching the day before the loss of the spacecraft and its crew in January 1986.

The first two NASA space shuttle launches, STS-1 & STS-2, had the main external tank painted white instead of the more familiar orange color. Designers revise the tank materials which eliminated the need for painting and just left them orange. In doing so, this also saved 600 lbs. of weight.

All space shuttles launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The Soviet Union spent two decades trying to build a space shuttle, and managed to launch a single automated flight just before the USSR collapsed and the shuttles were left to rot in their hangars.

The Russians had their own Space Shuttle program in the 80's called 'Buran' that was the first space shuttle to perform an unmanned flight, including landing in fully automatic mode. It launched, orbited the Earth several times, and successfully landed without a crew in strong crosswinds.

When was the last shuttle launch?

Today (April 12th) marks the 37th anniversary of the first shuttle launch by NASA.

The water poured onto the space shuttle's launch pad is for sound dampening, not cooling.

NASA had a rescue mission planned for every Space Shuttle mission after the Columbia disaster. It would optimally take around 45 days to launch, while the crew would wait aboard the ISS.

In 2009 a bat was holding onto the space shuttle during the launch

In 1998, astronaut John Glenn took Sea-Monkeys aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery. An experiment required creatures that could be loaded onto the shuttle in the summer and not die before launch in the fall. The Sea-Monkey eggs were hatched after returning from space.

How fast does a space shuttle launch?

If the space shuttle Challenger had been launched two days earlier - on Super Bowl Sunday - it most likely would not have exploded.

Beans and cornbread was the traditional meal served to NASA launch crews following a successful space shuttle launch. The tradition began in 1981 with the launch of STS-1.

The Spitzer Space Telescope is the only space observatory of the Great Observatories Program to not be launched by the Space Shuttle.

3 launch pad workers died inside the Space Shuttle Columbia before the first shuttle mission took place due to the lax of oxygen in the Aft engine compartment.

A 1980 article predicted Space Shuttle's high costs per launch, rocket booster failure (Challenger 1986) and fragile heat tiles (Columbia 2003).

In 1995 a flock of Woodpeckers inflicted about six dozen holes shutting down a NASA space shuttle launch

In 1986, NASA launched the Teacher in Space Project (TISP). Picked from 11,000 applicants, American teacher Christa McAuliffe was chosen. One minute into the shuttle launch, the shuttle blew up, killing Christa, 5 men and 2 women live on TV.

It only takes 150 seconds for a space shuttle to leave the earth's atmosphere from launch

On this day in 1989 a classified shuttle mission was launched that carried a 11-pound human skull into space

A group of worms used for experiments survived the intense heat of reentering the Earth's atmosphere after the Colombia shuttle disaster in 2003. Some of those Columbia worm descendants were launched into space in May 2011 during NASA's final flight of the shuttle Endeavour.

The sparks you saw during space shuttle launches were used to burn off hydrogen, not to ignite the engines

Guy Bluford, the first African-American astronaut, launched into space on shuttle Challenger's STS-8 mission thirty-five years ago, on August 30, 1983.

The US Air Force built a secret Space Shuttle launch complex in California to launch spy missions and satellites into orbit. The facility was finished in 1985 but never used due to the Challenger disaster.

The first space shuttle launch took place on April 12, 1981 - 20 years to the day after Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space. More than 34 years have now elapsed from *that* date.

After the Space Shuttle fleet was grounded following the Challenger disaster, chemicals meant for later launches were stored ad hoc at a plant in Nevada. The plant exploded as a result, killing two people, and destroying a nearby marshmallow factory.

This is our collection of basic interesting facts about Shuttle Launch. The fact lists are intended for research in school, for college students or just to feed your brain with new realities. Possible use cases are in quizzes, differences, riddles, homework facts legend, cover facts, and many more. Whatever your case, learn the truth of the matter why is Shuttle Launch so important!

Editor Veselin Nedev Editor