It will be exhibited near where it and all the other shuttles launched and most landed, at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida. NASA's first two orbiters to fly, Columbia and Challenger, were lost with their crews to in-flight accidents in February and January respectively. We stand on their shoulders tonight as we celebrate," said Bolden.
To mark the retirement of the space shuttle fleet, Johnson Space Center paused during Saturday's event to retire the orbiters' flags, which were deployed outside the center's headquarters building whenever the shuttles were in orbit.
Ellen Ochoa, Johnson's deputy director and a four-time shuttle astronaut, led the flag retirement ceremony, which saw representatives from the shuttle program's primary contractors hand off each flag to a Navy honor guard from nearby Ellington Field.
Ochoa paid tribute to each orbiter in the order they first flew as their red, white and blue flags were retired:. NASA retired the space shuttle to devote its resources to sending astronauts beyond low-Earth orbit, to an asteroid, back to the moon and eventually Mars.
In addition to developing a new multi-purpose crew vehicle MPCV designed to take crews outward into the solar system, NASA is soliciting the launch services from four commercially-designed spacecraft to take astronauts to and from the International Space Station.
Better known by his stage name "Five for Fighting," singer John Ondrasik played out the evening, performing solo numbers on guitar and piano including "Superman It's Not Easy ," " Years," and "World," which astronauts used as a soundtrack for a video filmed aboard the International Space Station. Museums and other facilities not selected to receive an orbiter were disappointed.
Elected officials representing Houston, Texas, location of the Johnson Space Center ; and Dayton, Ohio, location of National Museum of the United States Air Force called for Congressional investigations into the selection process, though no such action was taken. The chair of the NASA committee that made the selections pointed to the guidance from Congress that the orbiters go to facilities where the most people could see them, and the ties to the space program of Southern California home to Edwards Air Force Base, where nearly half of shuttle flights have ended and home to the plants which manufactured the orbiters and the Space Shuttle Main Engines , the Smithsonian curator of the nation's air and space artifacts , the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex where all shuttle launches have originated, and a large tourist draw and the Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum which served as the recovery ship for Project Mercury and Project Gemini.
In August the NASA Inspector General released an audit of the display selection process; it highlighted issues which led to the final decision. Space and Rocket Center , Huntsville, Alabama scored poorly on international access. The two most controversial locations which were not awarded an orbiter, Space Center Houston and National Museum of the U. Air Force , finished 2nd to last and near the middle of the list respectively. The report noted a scoring error, which if corrected would have placed the National Museum of the U.
Air Force in a tie with the Intrepid Museum and Kennedy Visitor Complex just below the California Science Center , although due to funding concerns the same decisions would have been made. Museum officials, though disappointed that they wouldn't receive a space flown orbiter, pointed to plans to allow the public to go inside the trainer, something not possible with a real orbiter.
In addition to the challenge of transporting the large vehicles to the display site, placing the units on permanent display required considerable effort and cost. An article in the February issue of Smithsonian Magazine [13] discussed the work performed on Discovery.
It involved removing the three main engines they were slated to be reused on NASA's new Space Launch System ; the windows were given to project engineers for analysis of how materials and systems fared after repeated space exposure; the communications modules were removed due to national—security concerns; and hazardous materials such as traces of propellants were thoroughly flushed from the plumbing.
Worn out engine nozzles are typically considered scrap, although nine nozzles were refurbished for display on the donated orbiters, so the actual engines can be retained by NASA. The twin pads originally built for the Apollo program are now inactive. LCB was deactivated first on January 1, The pad was then permanently deactivated and has since been dismantled and is being modified for the Space Launch System program, and possibly other launch vehicles.
Like the Apollo structures before them, the shuttle structures were scrapped. On January 16, , it was erroneously reported that NASA planned to abandon the pad, but the actual plan is to, like pad B, convert it for other rockets without dismantling it. The first launch is expected Spring of with the debut of Falcon Heavy. High Bay 3 is now being gutted of all equipment and given upgraded platforms, to support the Space Launch System and potentially the SpaceX Falcon Heavy as well as other vehicles.
The twin launch platforms are currently being modified for the Space Launch System with a large tower resembling those used in the Apollo program. Work is expected to be complete by The Crawler-Transporters were used as the mobile part of the pad with the shuttles; the two vehicles were deactivated and are being upgraded for the SLS program.
The other aircraft, NNA was used to send Discovery , Endeavour and Enterprise to their museums and in September was found to have few parts for Sofia. It is currently a museum piece at the Johnson Space Center. It will remain on call in case NASA needs it for further missions.
The buildings used to process the shuttles after each mission were decommissioned. The runway at KSC is currently used as a normal runway for the center and neighboring Cape Canaveral's daily operations. At one point before retirement, extension of the Space Shuttle program for an additional five years while a replacement could be developed, was considered by the U. For comparison to an earlier retirement, when the Saturn IB was last flown in for the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project , the Shuttle development program was already well underway.
However, the Shuttle did not fly until , which left a six-year gap in U. Because of this and other reasons, the U. With next week's historic SpaceX launch, this era of reliance may be coming to an end.
But why did NASA retire the space shuttle even though the space agency had no alternative launch vehicle? In February, , the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated as it reentered the atmosphere, killing all seven crew members on board, the second fatal shuttle accident after the catastrophic launch failure of Challenger in Following the Columbia disaster, shuttle flights were suspended for more than two years.
And in , President George Bush revealed his administration's Vision for Space Exploration, announcing that the program would be terminated after the end of the construction of the International Space Station. The Columbia accident finally wiped away the facade that the shuttle program was ever going to be what it was originally cracked up to be when President Nixon approved it in And most of the reasons for that were because of compromises made back in the s when the shuttle was being designed due to cutbacks in the budget.
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