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Space Shuttle Program Historic Properties 3-12
NASA Kennedy Space Center
3.5.2 Return to Flight: 1988 to 2002
The launch of Discovery (STS-26) from KSC Pad 39B on September 29, 1988 marked a
Return to Flight after a 32-month hiatus in manned spaceflight following the Challenger
accident. STS-26 carried a crew of five and a replacement for NASA’s Tracking and
Data Relay Satellite (Williamson 1999:186). The problem in the design of the SRBs that
had caused the loss of Challenger had been found and corrected. Many other critical
flight systems had been re-examined and recertified. “Since 1988, NASA has kept the
rate of Shuttle flights relatively low (five to seven per year) and improved its on-time
launch performance, suggesting that such a rate provides a good balance between safety
and costs” (Williamson 1999:188). Between September 29, 1988 and November 23,
2002, a total of 87 launches were made from the KSC, averaging six launches per year.
The years following the STS-26 flight “were among the most productive in the Shuttle’s
history, as a long backlog of payloads finally made it to the launch pad” (Reichhardt
2002:65). Roughly 79% of the missions during the first decade of the Shuttle Program
(1981-1991) terminated with landings at Edwards AFB in California. During the next
decade (1992-2002), this preference was reversed, with most landings taking place at
KSC.
Compared with the original figure of $10.45 million in 1972 “when the Shuttle existed
only on paper” (Heppenheimer 2002b:386), in 1996 the cost per Shuttle flight was
estimated at $550 million.
The Shuttle flights during the post-Challenger period included several dedicated DoD
missions; deployment of the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) in April 1990 (STS-31) and
subsequent servicing missions (STS-61, -82, -103, and -109); and the first operational use
of the drag chute (September 1992, STS-47). In addition to the HST, planetary and
astronomy missions included the Galileo probe to Jupiter, Magellan to Venus, and the
Upper Atmospheric Research Satellite. The Shuttle also flew a series of Spacelab
research missions (1983-1998) carrying dozens of international experiments in
disciplines ranging from materials science to plant biology. A modified Spacelab pallet
was used in STS-103 to carry replacement parts to the HST (Dismukes 2002) and
supplies for the Mir space station.
In 1995, a joint Russian/U.S. Shuttle-Mir program was initiated as a precursor to
construction of the International Space Station (ISS). The first approach and flyaround
of Mir took place on February 1995 (STS-67); the first Mir docking was in June 1995
(STS-71). The program was completed in June 1998 after numerous dockings and crew
exchanges. The Shuttle-Mir program served to acclimate the astronauts to living and
working in space. Many of the activities carried out were types they would perform on
the ISS (Rumerman and Garber 2000:3).
On December 4, 1999, Endeavour (STS-88) launched the first component of the ISS into
orbit. As noted by Williamson (1999:191), this event marked, “at long last the start of the
Shuttle’s use for which it was primarily designed – transport to and from a permanently
October 2007
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