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2:24 Today, Sunday January 28, 2024, is the 38th anniversary of the Challenger space shuttle explosion that took the lives of an entire crew, a loss that deeply grieved Americans across the nation, per WGAL. The seven NASA astronauts were killed 73 seconds after liftoff from the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida, according to History.com. The site noted that prior to the disaster, the launch was delayed for several days because of weather and technical issues.

Dr. John Calhoon, the outgoing president of the Society of Thoracic Surgeons, posted the slide immediately below as part of his farewell remarks. See if you can spot anything wrong with it: Of course you know what happened next: Dr. Calhoon was called out for his “hurtful” remarks by the STS’s new president and board of directors. You’d almost think the STS board had confused Dr. John Calhoon with John C. Calhoun or something. The only thing harmed by this reaction is the declining confidence patients will have in their doctors if this keeps up.

Though it was actually the first operational space shuttle to be retired from NASA service, the Orbiter Vehicle-103 (OV-103) Space Shuttle Discovery certainly earned that retirement after more than 27 years in service. As the third operational orbiter – preceded only by Columbia and Challenger – Discovery actually launched and landed successfully 39 times, more spaceflights than any other craft to date.

Thirteen tankers at heart of new ship-to-ship transhipment hub established mid-Atlantic to consolidate Russia-origin oil cargoes ... Evolving marine transport model seeks tankers to operate outside established markets, yet remain compliant with class, insurance and other regulatory and technical rules ... MYSTERY surrounds the identity of a China-based shipowner who has spent around $376m to acquire 13 tankers for deployment in high-risk, ship-to-ship transfers of Russia-origin crude in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Lloyd’s List has tracked five aframax tankers, seven very large crude carriers and one suezmax vessel to the anonymous buyer, via 20 separate but interconnected single-ship...

Legendary astronaut John Young, who twice ventured into space in pioneering two-man Gemini capsules, orbited the moon and then walked on its cratered surface before commanding two space shuttle missions, including the program’s maiden flight, has passed away. NASA confirmed the death early Saturday in a posting on Twitter: “We’re saddened by the loss of astronaut John Young, who was 87. Young flew twice to the Moon, walked on its surface & flew the first Space Shuttle mission. He went to space six times in the Gemini, Apollo & Space Shuttle programs.” Tweeted astronaut Terry Virts: “Rest In peace John...

Explanation: What's that rising from the clouds? The space shuttle. Sometimes, if you looked out the window of an airplane at just the right place and time, you could have seen something very unusual -- a space shuttle launching to orbit. Images of the rising shuttle and its plume became widely circulated over the web shortly after Endeavour's final launch in 2011 May. The above image was taken from a shuttle training aircraft by NASA and is not copyrighted. Taken well above the clouds, the image can be matched with similar images of the same shuttle plume taken below the...

Explanation: How was this picture taken? Usually, pictures of the shuttle, taken from space, are snapped from the space station. Commonly, pictures of the space station are snapped from the shuttle. How, then, can there be a picture of both the shuttle and the station together, taken from space? The answer is that during the Space Shuttle Endeavour's last trip to the International Space Station in 2011 May, a supply ship departed the station with astronauts that captured a series of rare views. The supply ship was the Russian Soyuz TMA-20 which landed in Kazakhstan later that day. The above...

Explanation: Climbing into cloudy skies, the Space Shuttle Orbiter Discovery (OV-103) took off from Kennedy Space Center Tuesday at 7 am local time. This time, its final departure from KSC, it rode atop a modified Boeing 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft. Following a farewell flyover of the Space Coast, Goddard Space Flight Center, and Washington DC, Discovery headed for Dulles International Airport in Virginia, destined to reside at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum Udvar-Hazy Center. Discovery retires as NASA's most traveled shuttle orbiter, covering more than 148 million miles in 39 missions that included the delivery of the Hubble...

Explanation: What would it be like to fly a space shuttle? Although the last of NASA's space shuttles has now been retired, it is still fun to contemplate sitting at the controls of one of the humanity's most sophisticated machines. Pictured above is the flight deck of Space Shuttle Endeavour, the youngest shuttle and the second to last ever launched. The numerous panels and displays allowed the computer-controlled orbiter to enter the top of Earth's atmosphere at greater than the speed of sound and -- just thirty minutes later -- land on a runway like an airplane. The retired space...

Explanation: At about 100 meters from the cargo bay of the space shuttle Challenger, Bruce McCandless II was farther out than anyone had ever been before. Guided by a Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU), astronaut McCandless, pictured above, was floating free in space. McCandless and fellow NASA astronaut Robert Stewart were the first to experience such an "untethered space walk"during Space Shuttle mission 41-B in 1984. The MMU works by shooting jets of nitrogen and has since been used to help deploy and retrieve satellites. With a mass over 140 kilograms, an MMU is heavy on Earth, but, like everything, is...

Except in wartime, there has never been another government program that produced as much technological innovation as the U.S. space program, and there likely never will be. No other program has so successfully infused the economy, rallied the nation, inspired youngsters toward academic achievement or established the U.S. as the world leader in technology. In spite of this, on Feb. 1, President Barack Obama announced the cancellation of the Constellation program of exploration, leaving NASA, for the first time in history, without a specific mission. It is as if President Gerald Ford had canceled the space shuttle program in 1975,...

A small groundswell is rising in Congress for a faster start on the heavy-lift launch vehicle President Barack Obama says he wants, but it may be swamped by the backwash from growing irritation over NASA’s sluggish production of justification for its “game-changing” new approach. A bipartisan gang of 62 House members wants Obama to initiate “the immediate development and production of a heavy-lift launch vehicle that, in conjunction with the Orion crew exploration vehicle, may be used for either lunar or deep-space exploration.” Their June 22 letter to Obama, circulated by Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.), follows word from Sen. Bill...

An unmanned Russian cargo ship veered out of control near the International Space Station on Friday, sailing clear past the orbiting lab instead of docking on autopilot, as engineers on Earth struggle to determine what went wrong. The robotic cargo ship Progress 38 was slated to dock at the space station at 12:58 p.m. EDT (1658 GMT) but lost its navigational lock on the orbiting lab about 28 minutes before the rendezvous. "The Progress literally flew past the station, but at a safe distance from the outpost," NASA commentator Rob Navias said. "The station crew reported seeing the Progress drift...

NASA's space shuttle program has gotten a brief reprieve, as the space agency plans to keep shuttle flights going until next year. The space agency made it official Thursday after weeks of hints about the potential for launch delays. Managers agreed to postpone the next-to-last shuttle launch until Nov. 1. Discovery had been scheduled to fly to the International Space Station in September. The very last mission now has a Feb. 26 launch date. Endeavour will close out the shuttle program by delivering a major scientific instrument to the space station. Why the delays? NASA says it needs more time...

Congressman Aderholt's bill intends to hold off any more cuts until Congress votes on the budget, with the hope of halting more layoffs. "I think the problem that you're seeing is that the money has been appropriated by Congress, to NASA. But NASA is sending the word out, that actually, they're giving some mixed signals that what's going to proceed, how it's, what's going to happen with the Constellation program, and therefore, alot of the money is being withheld from these companies," said Aderholt. "Therefore, that's what this legislation would do is send a message to these contractors, that we...

The two final US space shuttle missions before the shuttle program is phased out will likely be postponed, a NASA spokesperson told AFP on Friday. "It's not official yet but it's very likely," said Allard Beutel, media services chief at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. "The decision will be officially announced July 1st," he said. The US space shuttles are being retired after President Barack Obama opted not to fund a successor program, deciding instead to encourage private spacecraft development. The final two shuttle missions are both to the orbiting International Space Station (ISS). The shuttle Discovery's flight to...

With shuttle’s retirement, Baikonur will be NASA’s only path to space HOUSTON - The latest Soyuz launch underscores the gamble that the U.S. space program is embarking on: reliance for years to come on one other country to carry all of NASA's astronauts into space. No space system is ever 100 percent reliable — so how risky is this strategy? The central lesson of the worldwide partnership that built the International Space Station has become clear. We have learned that multiple independent technologies for major space capabilities provide amazing robustness in the face of the unavoidable surprises. Whether for oxygen,...

Congressional backers of NASA's existing space program are about to find out whether they have enough support on Capitol Hill to overturn President Obama's plan to abandon a return to the moon. Two milestones in the protracted congressional budget process are expected to provide NASA supporters their first concrete evidence next week that lawmakers from states without major NASA facilities are willing to defy the president and support the campaign to salvage parts of the $108 billion back-to-the-moon program. After four months of word wars, news conferences and letter writing challenging Obama's new direction for the space agency, lawmakers will...

NASA managers this week plan to request new launch dates for the final two shuttle flights to accommodate preparations on space station equipment slated to fly on the STS-133 mission, originally targeted for September. If approved, NASA would postpone until Oct. 29 the launch of shuttle Discovery on STS-133, which includes installation of the modified Multi-Purpose Logistics Module Leonardo cargo carrier for long-duration flight on the station and delivery of spare parts for several key station systems. Previously scheduled missions by international partners and Sun angle heating issues would in turn bump shuttle Endeavour’s launch with the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer,...

John Glenn: Keep space shuttles flying Monday, June 21, 2010 12:57 PM By Marcia Dunn ASSOCIATED PRESS CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Mercury astronaut John Glenn wants NASA's space shuttles to keep flying until a reliable replacement is ready, no matter how long it takes.