The Space Shuttle's return to Earth was one of the most dangerous parts of its mission. With temperatures exceeding 1650°C ...

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 ...

The space shuttle was the most important program ... Columbia’s damaged left wing had no such extra protection. What does a shuttle reentry feel like? To my mind, the shuttle’s hypersonic ...

The space shuttle program was retired in July 2011 ... that the worms — about 1 millimeter in length — survived the re-entry with only some heat damage. Some of the descendants of these ...

Upon its inception, NASA’s space shuttle program promised to usher in a new era of exploration, keeping astronauts space-bound with a reusable and relatively cheap ride into orbit. It was a ...

McCool, pilot. Takeoff and reentry are the most dangerous parts of a space shuttle mission. But in the 42 years that America has been sending astronauts into space, there had never been an ...

Space shuttle Columbia's final mission ended in disaster. The shuttle and seven-member crew were lost over Texas when Columbia burned up during reentry on Feb 1, 2003. Columbia's loss prompted ...

When the space shuttle Columbia began its reentry into the Earth's atmosphere yesterday morning, it was traveling at a speed greater than 16,000 miles per hour and had little in common with an ...

The Space Shuttle wasn't the first manned NASA spacecraft to bring back astronauts from orbit, with numerous Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo missions performing the remarkable feat of manned re-entry.

The air outside space shuttle Challenger’s window glows a hot pink-orange during reentry of the STS-41G flight in 1984. Q: My question is about your reentry to Earth’s atmosphere from orbit.

Students gathered around model space shuttles ... its crew were lost in the skies above America: The shuttle Columbia broke apart upon reentry on Feb. 1, 2003, killing all seven astronauts ...