By 24 August, final assembly of OV-101 was underway – as was a massive storm with the public regarding the name of NASA’s first Space Shuttle orbiter. The Grumman company (near New York City) delivered the first set of Space Shuttle wings to OV-101’s Palmdale construction facility on. On 26 July 1972, NASA officially awarded the contract for construction for its very first Space Shuttle orbiter to Rockwell International (now Boeing).īy 4 June 1974, structural assembly of OV-101’s crew module was underway, followed on 26 August 1974 by the start of structural assembly of her aft fuselage. With NASA’s new direction set, the Space Shuttle Program (SSP) was ready to begin a new era of focus on science and understanding in Low Earth Orbit (LEO).īut before the first Space Shuttle mission could launch from the Kennedy Space Center, FL, a great deal of ground testing was needed to fully, and to the best possible degree, understand the flight performance of this radical new design: A reusable, winged space plane that would launch like a rocket and land as glider with no propulsive force.įor this glider-landing method, a series of practice landings were drawn up to thoroughly test the proposed vehicle’s low atmosphere, pre-landing handling. OV-101 – A test vehicle for the next generation spaceship: For 30 years, the Space Shuttle orbiters Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavour wowed millions with their thunderous climbs to orbit, their graceful orbital dances with satellites, Hubble, MIR, and the International Space Station, and their tell-tale twin sonic booms that announced their landings back on Earth – landings that would not have been as smooth as they were if not for the help of their sister vehicle that never experienced space: OV-101 Enterprise.
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