When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. It doesn't seem out of place today, but the sight 30 years ago of a cylindrical module mounted ...

On 29 November 1972, NASA Administrator James Fletcher abolished the Space Station Task Force formed in early 1969 by his predecessor, Thomas Paine, and formed the Sortie Lab Task Force. The "sortie ...

Thirty years ago this week the first European-built Spacelab was launched on the Space Shuttle. ESA’s first astronaut, Ulf Merbold, flew on the mission, marking ESA’s entry into human spaceflight. On ...

Analysis of data from a 1985 shuttle Spacelab mission revealed a mysterious X-ray “glow” around the core of the Milky Way galaxy and “revolutionized” knowledge about the sun’s atomic furnace, ...

[Ken Shirriff] does some of the most interesting teardowns. This time, he’s looking at a French-built minicomputer called the Mitra 125 MS from around 1980. In particular, it was the computer inside ...

On April 29, 1985, the European Space Agency's Spacelab launched on the space shuttle Challenger on mission STS-51B. [‘On This Day in Space’ Video Series on Space.com] This was the second time the ...

As people move toward fully realizing the research opportunities afforded by the International Space Station and look ahead to the next generation of hardware development and research to be conducted, ...

After 30 years of service, NASA's fleet of three space shuttles is standing down for good. The final shuttle mission planned, the STS-135 launch of Atlantis, is scheduled for July 8. After that, the ...

After more than 20 years of flying, the space shuttle's contributions to science are still a matter of debate. Since the first shuttle flight in April 1981, there have been 113 missions, all of which ...

Dr James Pawelczyk flew aboard the 1998 NASA STS-90 Space Shuttle mission as a Payload Specialist. During his 16-day Spacelab flight, he and six other crew members orbited the Earth 256 times, ...

It doesn't seem out of place today, but the sight 30 years ago of a cylindrical module mounted inside the space shuttle's cargo bay was described as an "odd-appearing assemblage" in 1983. Subscribe to ...