The Space Shuttle wasn't the first manned NASA spacecraft ... However, all the earlier craft used ballistic re-entry trajectories, offered very little maneuverability, and made parachute-powered ...

From the archives: Watch CBS News coverage of the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster on ... escalating catastrophe as the blazing heat of re-entry engulfed the ship. But it initially played out ...

Returning to Earth is one of the most dangerous phases of spaceflight, and the Space Shuttle was built to endure it like no other vehicle before. As it re-entered the atmosphere at Mach 25 ...

the fuel tank was designed to disintegrate during its atmospheric reentry along a ballistic trajectory ensuring any remnants landed in the Indian or Pacific Oceans. The Space Shuttle coin is the ...

On the morning of Feb. 1, 2003, Space Shuttle Columbia was set to return to Florida’s Kennedy Space Center following a 16-day orbital mission packed with scientific experiments. But just 15 ...

NASA later determined that a piece of insulative foam broke off the space shuttle’s external tank on take-off and struck the heat protection tiles on the left wing. On re-entry, the wing caught ...

who was the first Israeli to go into space. All seven died 16 days later when the shuttle disintegrated on re-entry, the result of a chunk of insulating foam that had broken off from the external ...

From 2005 until 2011, a Space Shuttle would have to perform ... in which damage to the heat shield during launch led to the Shuttle’s destruction on re-entry. During the steady backflip, the ...