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About This Quiz
America's Space Shuttle program arose shortly after the end of the "Space Race" with the Soviet Union. With the U.S. having demonstrated dominance in space by planting a flag on the moon, NASA was free to turn its eyes to an ongoing, practical space-exploration program. That meant getting astronauts and payloads into space in a safe, cost-effective manner. And so, the Space Shuttle program was born.Â
For more than 30 years, America's space shuttles would carry satellites and space observatories into orbit. When the International Space Station project was begun, shuttles carried up the components for this ambitious work of "space architecture." Throughout the 1990s and the 2000s, the shuttle program collaborated with Russia (no longer part of the defunct USSR) and other nations -- a far cry from the days of the ultra-competitive Space Race.Â
Of course, the program came at a cost -- not only billions of federal budget dollars, but human lives. Most notably, two crews of seven astronauts were lost in catastrophic mission failures. The deaths of non-astronaut workers on the ground didn't make the news in such a big way, but they also died -- in falls from launch platforms or explosions of volatile fuel. Even so, the shuttle program filled many Americans with justifiable pride.
How much do you know about this part of U.S. history? Find out now!
Who was president when the Space Shuttle program was first proposed and studied?
John F. Kennedy
Lyndon B. Johnson
Richard Nixon
Though Kennedy was known for his aspiration to put a man on the moon, it was Nixon who held office during the early days of the shuttle program. His vice-president, Spiro Agnew, was the head of the task force that studied the idea.
Gerald Ford
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What was a chief goal of the new program?
Getting environmental data from space
Servicing a future space station
This goal was achieved when the International Space Station came to life. Shuttles ferried up supplies and astronauts during its construction, much of which happened in orbit.
Supporting a Mars colony
Space tourism for civilians
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What year did the Space Shuttle program come to an end?
2006
2011
The shuttle program was discontinued in 2011. Increasingly, private entrepreneurs like Elon Musk are involved in the planning of round-trip space transportation.
2015
2017
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The program was also called the STS, for Space _______ System.
Time
Travel
Transportation
Within NASA, the program used to be known as the Integrated Program Plan -- which didn't tell an outsider much about what it was. In time, the popular name became "the Space Shuttle program."
Touchdown
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What differentiated the Space Shuttles from earlier spacecraft?
They had artificial internal gravity.
They were much faster.
They used eco-friendly fuels.
They were reusable.
Earlier NASA craft had been one-time-use modules carried into space by rockets, and then splashed down in the ocean. As the name "shuttle" implies, the space shuttles could return to Earth, land like planes, and be launched again.
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Which of these did the space shuttles NOT have?
Landing gear
Windows
Wings
The shuttles had all of these.
The shuttles had many of the design elements that airplanes have, including wings. Granted, these were not the impressive, long wings that gliders or even most airplanes have. They were short, shallow wings that allowed for gliding on landing.
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Which of these was NOT the name of a shuttle?
Atlantis
Columbia
Endeavour
Valentina
NASA would have been unlikely to give a shuttle this name, given the competitiveness of the U.S. space program with Russia's. Valentina Tereshkova was the first woman in space, going up in 1963.
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True or false: The mission commander always piloted the shuttle.
True
False
"Pilot" was a separate position on the shuttle flights. Other specialized positions included "mission specialist" and "payload specialist."
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Which of these shuttles was destroyed in catastrophic accidents?
Challenger
Columbia
Endeavour
All of these
#1 and #2
NASA lost two shuttles to in-flight disasters. They were the Challenger and, later, Columbia.
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What year was the Challenger disaster?
1979
1986
What made the Challenger disaster -- it exploded about a minute after liftoff -- so tragic was that it was carrying a civilian teacher into space. Christa McAuliffe beat 11,000 other applicants to become NASA's first Teacher in Space, but the Challenger never reached orbit. Today, a crater on Venus is named in McAuliffe's honor.
1993
2000
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What caused the Challenger to explode?
An overloaded fuse
Faulty O-ring seals
The O-ring seals could not stand up to unusually cold conditions at the launch venue. That's the explanation in a nutshell, though the chain of failures this set off is more complicated (too much so to go into here).
An incorrect grade of fuel
Incorrect weight calculations
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About how many Americans watched the live launch of the Challenger?
10 percent
17 percent
This is a very high number; it's thought that interest might have been piqued by the participation of a school teacher. Even more extraordinary is the estimate, supported by a survey, that about 85 percent of Americans had heard about the disaster within an hour of the failed launch.
22 percent
31 percent
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What does "LEO," an important term in the shuttle program, stand for?
Low-Energy Orbit
Low Earth Orbit
Most manmade spacecraft are out into Low Earth Orbit. This was true of the shuttles as well.
Liftoff-Energy Optimization
"Leo" is a name, not an acronym
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Which was the first shuttle to be launched?
Atlantis
Columbia
The Columbia flew in April 1981. It made 36 orbits around the Earth before returning.
Endeavour
Enterprise
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How many astronauts crewed that first shuttle flight?
One
Two
John Young and Robert Crippen made the first flight. Young was the mission commander and Crippen the pilot.
Four
Six
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When Columbia launched, how many years had it been since there were Americans in space?
Three
Five
Six
Eight
The last U.S. flight to carry humans into space was the Apollo-Soyuz project in July 1974. Because it was a joint launch with the Russians, it was considered the end of the Space Race.
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Where did shuttles frequently touch down?
Cape Canaveral
Edwards Air Force Base in California
Many times, shuttles landed at the base in California. Later, Kennedy Space Center in Florida was the preferred landing site.
Lackland Air Force Base in Texas
Area 51 in Nevada
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What year did the Columbia disaster take place?
1998
2003
The failure of STS-107 happened during George W. Bush's first term in office. The U.S. was also gearing up for the second Gulf War at the time.
2004
2008
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Over which U.S. state did the Columbia break up?
California
Kansas
Nevada
Texas
The wreckage of the Columbia scattered over rural Texas. A large intact piece -- the frame of the cockpit window -- is now part of a memorial at Kennedy Space Center.
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What was the root cause of the Columbia disaster?
A fuel leak
A bird was caught in the air intake
A piece of insulation breaking loose
The piece of foam insulation broke off during launch, but the damage it did to the thermal protection shield on the left wing didn't take its toll until re-entry. The wing overheated and came apart, leading to the entire craft breaking up.
Excessive heat on re-entry overcame the shields
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The thermal protection tiles on the space shuttle were designed to withstand temperatures up to what level?
800 degrees F
1,100 degrees F
2,300 degrees F
Surprisingly, 90 percent of these "HRSI" tiles were composed of air caught between silica fibers. These fibers made up the other 10 percent.
10,000 degrees F
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True or false: There were fatalities involved with the first shuttle flight.
True
Two engineering workers were killed of oxygen deprivation while working in a nitrogen-filled engine compartment. Three deaths are sometimes attributed to the incident, as a third worker died 14 years later of lasting complications from the 1981 event.
False
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Including astronauts and support workers, how many people have died while working on the shuttle program?
10
12
15
More than 20
We don't bring this up to be morbid, but rather to point out that America's space program has had a cost in terms of lives as well as dollars. However, we should note that Russia's and China's space programs have had much higher numbers of fatalities, with one accident in Russia costing 78 lives in one day.
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What type of fuel did the space shuttles use?
Biomass
Cryogenic
Cyrogenic fuel is fuel that must be stored at very low temperatures to remain liquid. The shuttles' cryogenic engines burned liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen.
Plasma
Petroleum-based
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Who built the engines for the Space Shuttle program?
Boeing
Lockheed
Rocketdyne
Rocketdyne had already been making the engines for the Saturn rockets used in NASA's earlier missions. THe company won the Space Shuttle contract in the 1970s.
Rolls-Royce
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How many engines did each shuttle have?
Two
Three
Really? Fewer than most airplanes nowadays? It's true, but these engines were huge. The RS-25 engines weighed 7,775 pounds each.
Four
Eight
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True or false: There is no planned successor to the Space Shuttle program.
True
False
The next program on the drawing board is the SLS, or Space Launch System. It will use an expendable craft, but one more powerful than any of the shuttles, with four RS-25 engines.
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Which of these did a space shuttle NOT carry into space?
The Chandra X-Ray Observatory
The Hubble Space Telescope
The Mir docking module
They transported all of these
The shuttles were real workhorses. They also carried Spacelab, the Compton Gamma Observatory, and parts of the ISS into orbit.
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Which of these was the last shuttle to fly?
Atlantis
The last mission was called a "launch-on-need" mission. The development of commercial rockets to replace shuttle functions was slower than expected, and there was cargo that needed to be carried up to the ISS.
Discovery
Enterprise
Endeavor
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What was the last year in which a space shuttle flew?
2008
2011
The Space Shuttle program bowed in 2011, during President Barack Obama's tenure. Private/commercial rockets were steadily becoming the wave of the future.
2012
2014
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How many flights did Space Shuttles make between 1981 and 2011?
22
45
78
135
In the 1960s, Americans probably couldn't have imagined a time when space flights would become only mildly newsworthy events. Yet that's what the Space Shuttle program, with more than 100 missions, accomplished.
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Who commanded the last shuttle mission?
Sally Ride
Chris Ferguson
Ferguson led a crew of four. He gave an emotional speech upon landing at Kennedy Space Center.
Sandra Magnus
Deke Slayton
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How many people rode on space shuttles during the program's lifetime?
78
Approximately 150
Approximately 350
A total of 355 people hitched a ride into space on NASA's shuttles. Not bad for a program lasting 30 years!
More than 400
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Other than Americans, astronauts of which nationalities flew on shuttles?
Canadian
Israeli
Russian
Both #1 and #2
All of these and more
Astronauts from 16 nations flew on NASA's space shuttles. The first Belgian and Italian in space both got there courtesy of the program.
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On which shuttle did Sally Ride become the first American woman in space?
Atlantis
Challenger
Ride achieved this honor in 1983. She flew two missions on the Challenger.
Columbia
Discovery
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You Got:
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