be reusable and able to carry large pieces of equipment, such as satellites, space telescopes, or
sections of a space station. The resulting spacecraft was aspace shuttle, shown inFigure
23.30. Although this vehicle is sometimes referred to as “the space shuttle,” the U.S. has
actually had five working space shuttles—Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis, and
Endeavor. The Soviet Union built a similar shuttle called Buran, but it never flew a mission
with humans aboard.
Figure 23.30: Since 1981, the space shuttle has been the United States’ primary vehicle for
carrying people and large equipment into space. This photo shows the space shuttle Atlantis
on the launch pad in 2006. ( 30 )
A space shuttle has three main parts, although you are probably most familiar with the