July 21, 2011, 15:18 Society

America's last shuttle

The last Atlantis shuttle lands in the United States, the space shuttle program ends

Anastasia Berseneva close

The Atlantis shuttle, the last in the history of space shuttles, landed at the John F. Kennedy Space Center on Merritt Island in Florida exactly on schedule at 5.57 a.m. (13.57 Moscow time).

Now the United States is left without spacecraft capable of delivering astronauts to the ISS.

Until 2016, NASA signed an agreement with Roscosmos on the joint use of Soyuz spacecraft.

The landing took place in the pre-dawn twilight. The weather was almost perfect, NASA said: dry, cloudless and very light wind.

All those who are interested in space flights could watch the return of the shuttle via an online broadcast on the website of the American space agency.

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The Atlantis shuttle landed in Florida, ending the space shuttle program. Now the United States is left without spacecraft capable of delivering astronauts to the ISS. Until 2016, NASA signed an agreement with Roscosmos on the joint use of Soyuz spacecraft.

The Atlantis shuttle, the last in the history of space shuttles, landed at the John F. Kennedy Space Center on Merritt Island in Florida exactly on schedule at 5.57 a.m. (13.57 Moscow time). The landing took place without incident. said The weather was almost perfect, NASA : dry, cloudless and very light wind. All those who are interested in space flights could watch the return of the shuttle via an online broadcast on the website of the American space agency. When the shuttle approached the spaceport, a picture from the cockpit appeared on the screen - a landing strip shining with lights in front of the shuttle's nose. The landing took place in the pre-dawn twilight.

The final Atlantis crew included commander Chris Ferguson, pilot Doug Hurley, and astronauts Sandy Magnus and Rex Walheim.

The shuttle with expedition STS-135 launched on July 8, docked with the ISS two days later and returned to Earth 11 days later. This flight ended the 30-year Space Shuttle program.

How the shuttle works The shuttle launches vertically, and the hydrogen engines (second stage) and solid fuel boosters (first stage) are simultaneously turned on - this is the so-called parallel circuit. The boosters are separated from the tank and parachuted into the ocean, where they are found and picked up by special ships; they return to the manufacturing plant, where they undergo repairs and are again prepared for launch. And the engines on the shuttle itself continue to operate, drawing fuel from the external tank. When the speed reaches suborbital, that is, the shuttle enters an intermediate orbit of 100 km, a huge drop tank is separated, after which the shuttle is accelerated by its own engine, using fuel from the internal tanks, and the dropped drop tank falls into the ocean after half a revolution. After insertion into orbit, the shuttle can perform maneuvers using low-thrust maneuvering engines, if necessary, entering a working orbit. In the working orbit, the doors of the cargo compartment opened; its size was 4.6 m by 18.3 m. A special manipulator mounted in the compartment removed the satellite and left it in orbit. The shuttle flew away from him. Depending on the flight program, the satellite, using its own engines, moved to a different orbit or remained in the same one. After completing the flight program, the shuttle engines issued a braking impulse, and it descended along a gentle trajectory, like a glider, that is, a regular airplane, but with the engines turned off. Thermal loads during descent from orbit are very high, so a special heat-protective coating had to be developed. This is the first time a coating of this kind has been created. Before this, ablative coatings were used; they worked on the principle of mass entrainment: thermal protection consisted in the fact that the coating burned out and the heat was carried away by the air flow. It was impossible to use such a coating for the shuttle, because the aerodynamic surfaces in this case would constantly change shape. In addition, this would contradict the ideology of the reusability of the spacecraft. True, in practice, the reusable coating still had to be updated during pre-flight preparation. The plane was landing on a specially built runway. An emergency landing was provided at the bottom of a dried salt lake - a natural perfectly smooth surface. After landing, the shuttle was loaded onto the external sling of a large Boeing 747 transport aircraft and transported to the cosmodrome, where it underwent pre-flight training.

The history of the shuttle began in the late 60s, when a fundamental decision was made to design a reusable space system. The following arguments were given: how can there be a transport system that, having completed its task, dies? “Imagine an airliner that dies after carrying passengers,” was the argument given by the authors of popular articles. Experts believed that with the help of a reusable system, the cost of putting a kilogram of payload into orbit would drop a thousand times. In 1972, fundamental NASA documents were signed that determined the appearance of the future shuttle.

Initially, NASA expected about 50 launches per year - almost every week.

The service life of each shuttle was 20 years, or 100 flights. In fact, the service life turned out to be longer, and the number of flights was significantly less. The space shuttle Discovery, the record holder, completed only 39 flights.

According to the plan, flight tests of the shuttles were to begin in 1978. In fact, for various reasons, including serious technical difficulties, the first launch took place on April 12, 1981, exactly 20 years after Gagarin’s flight.

The first flight of the shuttle was experimental, the crew consisted of only two people. The ship's commander was American space program veteran John Young . The second flight also took place in 1981 and also with two pilots on board. In the first manned flights with two crew members, the cabin was equipped with ejection seats, which was impossible when fully loaded. At the end of the test flights, when the crews became full, the seats were removed, otherwise a situation would have arisen that some of the crew could be saved, but others could not. The first shuttle (not counting the Enterprise test) was Columbia, the second was Challenger, the third was Discovery, and the fourth was Atlantis. A fifth shuttle was originally planned, but for cost reasons its production was canceled. However, after the death of Challenger, another shuttle was built to restore the frequency of launches - it became Endeavor.

The maximum launch frequency was reached in 1985 - 9 times. By the end of the 80s, it was planned to reach 24 launches per year, but due to the Challenger disaster, these plans were not realized. The shuttle disintegrated during takeoff. At the 73rd second of flight at an altitude of 14 km, the left solid fuel accelerator separated from one of the two mounts. After spinning around the second one, the accelerator pierced the main fuel tank. The bow section, in which the people were, was torn off and it fell into the water.

The entire crew died - seven people, including the first non-professional astronaut - former teacher Christa McAuliffe, who won a nationwide competition for the right to fly into space, organized on the initiative of US President Ronald Reagan .

By the time Challenger died on January 28, 1986, a large number of cargoes were in line for launch: NASA deliberately reoriented cargo to the shuttle as the main carrier, and it was planned to completely abandon disposable carriers, with the exception of the lightest ones. But then the concept of using shuttles was gradually changed: payloads began to be launched from disposable rockets, and the shuttle was used as a flying laboratory and a means of delivering people and cargo, first to Mir and then to the ISS.

The second disaster - the death of Columbia on February 1, 2003 - predetermined the end of this program.

The shuttle exploded and burned during landing. Seven people died.

It became clear that the risk was too great, and a decision was made to end shuttle flights in 2010. Losing another ship would be too much of a blow to NASA's prestige. In addition, the material costs were too high. Already in the first years of operation, the cost of putting a kilogram of payload into orbit turned out to be on the same order of magnitude as the corresponding value for disposable rockets (and at the end of their service life, even more expensive). The cost of operation and pre-flight maintenance turned out to be much higher than planned. The fact that it was not possible to reach the projected number of launches also left its mark: the cost of the infrastructure remained the same. When it became clear that it was not possible to radically reduce the cost, they began to put forward a reduction in the cost of creating the satellite itself as the main advantage. Because the shuttle's cargo bay is large and the launch mass is also quite large, designers are less limited by the size and weight of the payload.

When the Space Shuttle system was created, everyone was full of optimism that this was only an intermediate link, which in a few decades would be replaced by a new generation of fully reusable spacecraft. As a result, even the program itself was implemented in a truncated form, and the design and production of fully reusable ships was not even started. Two disasters showed that the system was too complex for regular high-frequency flights, was not reliable enough, and had little provision for emergency rescue, unlike expendable space rockets, where rescue is provided at almost any stage of launch.

After the cessation of shuttle flights, the United States was virtually left without the means to lift astronauts to the ISS.

The Orion spacecraft, which is currently undergoing testing, will replace the shuttles. It will be able to make its first flight no earlier than 2014, and until that time the United States will use the services of the Russian space industry, as NASA representatives have previously repeatedly stated.

Representatives of the American space agency have repeatedly stated that NASA is satisfied with the Russian Soyuz and does not plan to abandon them in favor of devices from other countries. Previously, NASA and Roscosmos signed new agreements worth $753 million, extending the contract for the delivery of astronauts to the ISS until 2016. NASA will pay $51 million for one seat for an American astronaut.