REMEMBERING THE SPACE SHUTTLE

At the dawn of the Space Age, when mobile phones, laptop computers and the internet were still the stuff of science fiction, astronauts flew into space crammed inside cramped metal capsules that flew only once, launched on top of rockets that also flew only once. Today astronauts are flying into space inside capsules again, although the reusable Dragon and Orion spacecraft are a lot more sophisticated and a lot less cramped than those that flew during the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo missions.

But for three memorable decades between 1981 and 2011, astronauts travelled into space and worked and lived in orbit inside spacecraft that could be used again and again. These sleek, white spacecraft flew up into orbit like rockets, but landed back on Earth at the end of their mission like a plane, rolling gracefully to a halt on a runway instead of splashing down in the ocean. These were the Space Shuttles.

Designed to be flown dozens of times every year, making access to space reliable and cheap, the shuttles ultimately proved too expensive and sadly too dangerous to keep flying, and NASA returned to using capsules. But for the astronauts who flew them, and the space enthusiasts who whooped and cheered as they leapt off the launchpad and thundered into space,