The materials include:. These materials are designed to absorb large quantities of heat without increasing their temperature very much. In other words, they have a high heat capacity. During re-entry, the aft steering jets help to keep the orbiter at its 40 degree attitude.
The hot ionized gases of the atmosphere that surround the orbiter prevent radio communication with the ground for about 12 minutes i. When re-entry is successful, the orbiter encounters the main air of the atmosphere and is able to fly like an airplane.
The orbiter is designed from a lifting body design with swept back "delta" wings. With this design, the orbiter can generate lift with a small wing area. At this point, flight computers fly the orbiter. The orbiter makes a series of S-shaped, banking turns to slow its descent speed as it begins its final approach to the runway.
The commander picks up a radio beacon from the runway Tactical Air Navigation System when the orbiter is about miles km away from the landing site and , feet 45, m high. At 25 miles 40 km out, the shuttle's landing computers give up control to the commander. The commander flies the shuttle around an imaginary cylinder 18, feet or 5, m in diameter to line the orbiter up with the runway and drop the altitude.
During the final approach, the commander steepens the angle of descent to minus 20 degrees almost seven times steeper than the descent of a commercial airliner. What is a launch window? A launch window is the precise period of time, ranging from minutes to hours, within which a launch must occur for a rocket or Space Shuttle to be positioned in the proper orbit.
Sometimes, this window is determined by the passing of an orbiting spacecraft with which the Shuttle must rendezvous, such as the International Space Station or an ailing satellite.
At other times, the Shuttle or an unmanned rocket must be launched within a certain window so that it can release its satellite payload at the right time to place it in an orbit over a certain region of Earth. Who was the youngest astronaut to date? Who was the oldest astronaut to fly on the Space Shuttle? How much does it cost to launch a Space Shuttle? When are we going to Mars? And when are we going back to the Moon? NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin has stated that we must accomplish at least four objectives before we are prepared for a Mars mission.
We must successfully build and operate the planned International Space Station, gain working-level experience with other nations in space cooperation, develop an affordable mission scenario that can be accomplished in about one decade, and allow time for the world economy to improve substantially.
With these goals in mind, NASA currently plans to operate the Space Station for at least the first decade of the next century, sending astronauts back to the Moon or on to Mars during the second decade of the new century. This time frame could change with technological breakthroughs. Can I apply to take a ride on the Space Shuttle? Can I be the first kid in Space? NASA has no immediate plans to send children, teenagers or any other general citizens into space. For the near future at least, spaceflight remains too risky and too expensive for anyone but highly trained astronauts and payload specialists to take part in.
However, one of our goals is to help industry develop new rocket systems that would make spaceflight much more simple and routine, so that many more people could go into orbit in the future. Is there any chance for a school to run a science experiment on the Shuttle? What are the names of the Space Shuttle orbiters? The Enterprise was flown only within Earth's atmosphere, during Shuttle approach and landing tests conducted in When air or any gas, for that matter is compressed it heats up; conversely when it expands it cools.
Now consider the re-entry of the space shuttle or the fall of a meteor through our atmosphere. Initially, the shuttle moves around Earth in the emptiness of space at a tremendous speed. The astronauts slow down by firing some thrusters and gravity begins to pull the shuttle to a lower orbit. During re-entry, the shuttle is going so fast, it compresses the air ahead of it. The compression of the air layers near the leading edges of the shuttle is quick, causing the temperature of the air to rise to as high as degrees Fahrenheit!
Normally, this high temperature will melt almost any material- from the rock of a meteor to the metal skin of a space shuttle. Thus, the shuttle needs a layer of insulation. The shuttle enters or "attacks" the atmosphere at such an angle that its nose and underside contacts and compresses the air and absorbs most of the heat generated. On 29 April, the probe made its closest pass yet to the sun, a little more than 10 million kilometres from its surface.
During the time of closest approach, it was travelling at about kilometres per second relative to the sun, the fastest any spacecraft has ever moved.
At this rate, it would take about 4.
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