STS-1, better known as the space shuttle Columbia, left NASA’s Kennedy Space Centre in Florida on 12 April 1981, and just over two days later came down to land at Edwards Air Force Base in ...

Here’s a look at human spaceflight programs in the United States and around the world. Facts The United States ended its crewed space shuttle program with the launch of Atlantis on July 8, 2011, and ...

Space shuttle launches work on the same principle, just on a much larger scale and with many more variables. Engineers calculate how much time they have—down to the minute or even second—to ...