AP 118 · No. 11 Section II · Aircraft Plate 342 / 370

Plate 342 of 370 · Cold War · Reusable winged spacecraft

Space Shuttle orbiter

Discovery (OV-103), painted as The Space Shuttle orbiter Discovery, OV-103, which first flew into space on 30 August 1984, made 39 spaceflights, more than any other orbiter, among them both return-to-flight missions after the Challenger and Columbia losses and the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope, and has been displayed since April 2012 at the Smithsonian’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, Chantilly, Virginia: NASA’s reusable winged spacecraft, with a long, flat-sided fuselage carrying a two-deck crew cabin behind the nose and a 60 ft payload bay under clam-shell doors (shown closed), a low double-delta wing with elevons, a swept fin with a split rudder that opened as a speed brake, a body flap under the tail, two orbital manoeuvring engine pods either side of the fin and three main-engine nozzles (replicas, as displayed), shown standing on its tricycle undercarriage with the gear doors open: the weathered thermal protection system as it came back from its last flight, with black heat-resistant tiles over the underside, nose and lower sides, dark grey carbon-carbon on the nose cap and wing leading edges and off-white insulation blankets above, ‘Discovery’ on both sides of the forward fuselage, the US flag, ‘United States’ and the NASA insignia on the payload bay sides, the flag and ‘Discovery’ on the starboard wing and the NASA insignia on the port wing, as photographed at Udvar-Hazy (no orbiter is in a UK museum; shape from the National Park Service’s measured drawings of Discovery, HAER TX-116-A, at one scale for all views; the tiles are drawn as a regular pattern rather than tile by tile, and the yellow display stands are left off).

3D model

Turn it over

A procedural model built in Blender from published dimensions, drawings and photographs, painted as The Space Shuttle orbiter Discovery, OV-103, which first flew into space on 30 August 1984, made 39 spaceflights, more than any other orbiter, among them both return-to-flight missions after the Challenger and Columbia losses and the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope, and has been displayed since April 2012 at the Smithsonian’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, Chantilly, Virginia: NASA’s reusable winged spacecraft, with a long, flat-sided fuselage carrying a two-deck crew cabin behind the nose and a 60 ft payload bay under clam-shell doors (shown closed), a low double-delta wing with elevons, a swept fin with a split rudder that opened as a speed brake, a body flap under the tail, two orbital manoeuvring engine pods either side of the fin and three main-engine nozzles (replicas, as displayed), shown standing on its tricycle undercarriage with the gear doors open: the weathered thermal protection system as it came back from its last flight, with black heat-resistant tiles over the underside, nose and lower sides, dark grey carbon-carbon on the nose cap and wing leading edges and off-white insulation blankets above, ‘Discovery’ on both sides of the forward fuselage, the US flag, ‘United States’ and the NASA insignia on the payload bay sides, the flag and ‘Discovery’ on the starboard wing and the NASA insignia on the port wing, as photographed at Udvar-Hazy (no orbiter is in a UK museum; shape from the National Park Service’s measured drawings of Discovery, HAER TX-116-A, at one scale for all views; the tiles are drawn as a regular pattern rather than tile by tile, and the yellow display stands are left off). Drag to orbit, scroll or pinch to zoom · download .glb (2.9 MB)

Data plate

Specification

First flight, number built and top speed are for the whole family (Enterprise, Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis & Endeavour); engine, crew and dimensions are for the Discovery (OV-103) modelled here.

History

The Shuttle Discovery

In January 1972 President Nixon approved NASA’s plan for a reusable space transport, to replace throwaway rockets with a winged craft that would fly to orbit and back like an aeroplane. North American Rockwell won the contract for the orbiter that July. It was the part of the system that carried the crew, the payload and the three main engines, and it was boosted by two solid-fuel rockets and fed from a huge external fuel tank, both shed on the way up. The US Air Force wanted to use it too, and its demand to be able to land far to one side of the orbital track gave the orbiter its large double-delta wing. To survive re-entry at up to 3,000 °F it was covered in some 24,000 silica tiles and insulating blankets, with reinforced carbon-carbon on the nose and wing leading edges.

The first orbiter, Enterprise, was built for approach and landing tests and never went into space. Carried aloft on the back of a Boeing 747, it was released for its first free flight on 12 August 1977 and glided down to land in the Mojave Desert. Columbia made the first spaceflight on 12 April 1981, flown by John Young and Robert Crippen, and Challenger, Discovery and Atlantis followed. With no engine for the return, every landing was a single unpowered approach, far steeper than an airliner’s, at about 215 mph. The orbiters launched satellites and space probes, carried the Spacelab laboratory and, from 1998, built the International Space Station.

Two orbiters and their crews were lost: Challenger broke up 73 seconds after launch on 28 January 1986, and Columbia broke up during re-entry on 1 February 2003, after its wing leading edge had been holed by foam from the external tank during launch. Fourteen astronauts died. Endeavour was built to replace Challenger. The fleet flew 135 missions in all, the last ending when Atlantis landed on 21 July 2011. Discovery is now at the Smithsonian’s Udvar-Hazy Center in Virginia, Atlantis at the Kennedy Space Center, Endeavour at the California Science Center in Los Angeles and Enterprise at the Intrepid Museum in New York. None is in a UK museum.

This airframe

Discovery (OV-103)

OV-103The airframe modelled

Discovery, OV-103, the third orbiter to fly in space, first flew on 30 August 1984. It launched the Hubble Space Telescope in April 1990, carried John Glenn back into orbit in 1998 at the age of 77, and flew both return-to-flight missions, STS-26 in 1988 after the loss of Challenger and STS-114 in 2005 after the loss of Columbia. Its 39th and last mission, STS-133, ended on 9 March 2011. In April 2012 it was flown on the back of a 747 over Washington to Dulles and taken into the Smithsonian’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, Chantilly, Virginia, where it stands today, unwashed and weathered from its last re-entry. The model shows it as it is displayed there, standing on its gear with the payload bay doors closed and replica main-engine nozzles: black heat-resistant tiles over the underside, nose and lower sides, dark grey carbon-carbon on the nose cap and wing leading edges and off-white blankets above, ‘Discovery’ on both sides of the nose, the US flag, ‘United States’ and the NASA insignia on the payload bay sides, the flag and ‘Discovery’ on the starboard wing and the NASA insignia on the port wing. Its shape follows the National Park Service’s measured drawings of Discovery itself; the tiles are drawn as a regular pattern rather than tile by tile, and the yellow display stands are left off.

Where to see one

Not on charge

Discovery is at the Smithsonian’s Udvar-Hazy Center, Atlantis at Kennedy Space Center, Endeavour in Los Angeles and Enterprise in New York.

All 370 plates

Profiles and models are procedural interpretations built in Blender from published dimensions, three-view drawings and photographs of each airframe. Treat the museum aircraft as the reference.