Space Flight Experience
STS-40 Spacelab Life Sciences (SLS-1), a dedicated space and life sciences mission, which launched from the Kennedy Space Center, Florida, on June 5, 1991. SLS-1 was a nine-day mission during which the crew performed experiments which explored how humans, animals, and cells respond to microgravity and re-adapt to Earth's gravity on return. Other payloads included experiments designed to investigate materials science, plant biology and cosmic radiation. Following 146 orbits of the Earth, Columbia and her crew returned to land at Edwards Air Force Base, California, on June 14, 1991. Mission duration was 218 hours, 14 minutes, 20 seconds.
STS-59 Space Radar Laboratory (SRL-1), part of Mission to Planet Earth, was an eleven-day flight dedicated to the study of the Earth and the atmosphere around it. The two primary payloads were the Spaceborne Imaging Radar-C/X-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SIR-C/X-SAR), and Measurement of Air Pollution from Space (MAPS). The crew completed over 400 precise maneuvers (a Shuttle record) to properly point the radar, imaged over 400 selected sites with approximately 14,000 photographs (a Shuttle record) and recorded enough data to fill 26,000 encyclopedias. Areas of investigation included ecology, oceanography, geology, and hydrology. Launching on April 9, 1994, from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the Endeavour and her crew of six completed 183 orbits of the Earth before landing at Edwards AFB, California, on April 20, 1994.
Read more about this topic: Sidney M. Gutierrez
Famous quotes containing the words space, flight and/or experience:
“What a phenomenon it has been—science fiction, space fiction—exploding out of nowhere, unexpectedly of course, as always happens when the human mind is being forced to expand; this time starwards, galaxy-wise, and who knows where next.”
—Doris Lessing (b. 1919)
“It is marvelous indeed to watch on television the rings of Saturn close; and to speculate on what we may yet find at galaxy’s edge. But in the process, we have lost the human element; not to mention the high hope of those quaint days when flight would create “one world.” Instead of one world, we have “star wars,” and a future in which dumb dented human toys will drift mindlessly about the cosmos long after our small planet’s dead.”
—Gore Vidal (b. 1925)
“The wedding was a quiet affair, and when called upon to enjoy my promotion from lodger to lover did I experience only bitterness and distaste? No.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)