KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FLA. -- STS-83 Pilot Susan L. Still greets KSC postlanding operations workers on Runway 33 at the Space Center’s Shuttle Landing Facility after the Space Shuttle Orbiter Columbia landed at 2:33:11 p. m. EDT, April 8, to conclude the Microgravity Science Laboratory-1 (MSL-1) mission. At main gear touchdown, the STS-83 mission duration was 3 days, 23 hours, 12 minutes. The planned 16-day mission was cut short by a faulty fuel cell. This is only the third time in Shuttle program history that an orbiter was brought home early due to mechanical problems. This was also the 36th KSC landing since the program began in 1981 KSC-97pc607
Summary
KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FLA. -- STS-83 Pilot Susan L. Still greets KSC postlanding operations workers on Runway 33 at the Space Center’s Shuttle Landing Facility after the Space Shuttle Orbiter Columbia landed at 2:33:11 p. m. EDT, April 8, to conclude the Microgravity Science Laboratory-1 (MSL-1) mission. At main gear touchdown, the STS-83 mission duration was 3 days, 23 hours, 12 minutes. The planned 16-day mission was cut short by a faulty fuel cell. This is only the third time in Shuttle program history that an orbiter was brought home early due to mechanical problems. This was also the 36th KSC landing since the program began in 1981
The Space Shuttle program was the United States government's manned launch vehicle program from 1981 to 2011, administered by NASA and officially beginning in 1972. The Space Shuttle system—composed of an orbiter launched with two reusable solid rocket boosters and a disposable external fuel tank— carried up to eight astronauts and up to 50,000 lb (23,000 kg) of payload into low Earth orbit (LEO). When its mission was complete, the orbiter would re-enter the Earth's atmosphere and lands as a glider. Although the concept had been explored since the late 1960s, the program formally commenced in 1972 and was the focus of NASA's manned operations after the final Apollo and Skylab flights in the mid-1970s. It started with the launch of the first shuttle Columbia on April 12, 1981, on STS-1. and finished with its last mission, STS-135 flown by Atlantis, in July 2011.
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