Blast Off!The International Space Station is now ready for its first full-time residents--Captain William Shepard This article is about William Shepard (1737-1817) of Massachusetts. For William Shepard (1799 - 1852) of North Carolina, see William Biddle Shepard. William Shepard (December 1, 1737 - November 16, 1817) was a United States Representative from Massachusetts. , an American astronaut; and two Russians cosmonauts. The crew is set to blast off from Kazakhstan on October 30 in a Russian spacecraft (see map, pp. 18-19). To prepare the space station for its first crew, astronauts on board the space shuttle space shuttle, reusable U.S. space vehicle. Developed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), it consists of a winged orbiter, two solid-rocket boosters, and an external tank. Atlantis brought three tons of supplies to the station in September. The astronauts also installed other essentials, such as a toilet and an oxygen generator. A second space shuttle, Discovery, was scheduled to visit the space station in October. Its crew had the job of installing electrical lines, computer connections, and other parts. The first space-station crew plans to stay for four months. Their mission will be to flight-test the new station and help with the assembly of additional that space shuttles The term Space Shuttles refers to partly or fully reusable launch vehicles for regularly placing payloads into low earth orbit. See:
NASA NASA: see National Aeronautics and Space Administration. NASA in full National Aeronautics and Space Administration Independent U.S. plans to launch 15 shuttle missions to the space station in the coming year. It will take approximately 45 shuttle missions and 150 space walks to assemble all the parts of the station by the year 2006. "There's a lot of work that has to be done," says NASA administrator Daniel Goldin Daniel Saul Goldin (born July 23, 1940) served as the 9th and longest-tenured Administrator of NASA from April 1, 1992, to November 17, 2001. He was appointed by President George H. W. Bush and served under three presidential administrations. . When the station is finished, it will be a floating laboratory the size of two football fields. The station orbits about 236 miles (380 kin) above Earth and can be seen from the ground under proper conditions. To find out when the station will be visible from Earth, check out the human spaceflight “Space travel” redirects here. For travel in space as a tourist, see Space tourism. A human spaceflight is a spaceflight with a human crew, and possibly passengers. This makes it unlike robotic space probes or remotely-controlled satellites. Web site at: www.spaceflight.nasa.gov/realdata/sightings |
|
||||||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion