Space Shuttle |
The main results of space exploration in the 1970's came from unmanned spacecraft. Orbiting satellites transmitted television, telephone, and radio signals around the earth, vastly improving communication. Orbiting cameras transformed weather forecasting. The American Voyager spacecraft provided important new information about the makeup of other planets.
A new phase of space exploration began with the launch of the first space shuttle, Columbia, in 1981. By 1986 reusable shuttles, which contained elements of both the traditional space capsule and the airplane, had completed two dozen successful missions. Early that year, however, the explosion of the shuttle Challenger and the lost of its crew temporarily halted the human explo¬ration of space.
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