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Unmanned Shuttle Landings?

by Mr. Flight on July 20th, 2006

The New York Times has reported about a scenario where a Space Shuttle arrives at the International Space Station only to find that there is significant tile damage and the risks of reentry are too great. In that scenario the crew would hunker down in the International Space station until they could be rescued.

So what would they then do with the Shuttle? According to the report NASA has developed a way to take the craft through reentry and land the shuttle by remote control. Currently much of the reentry and landing is automated, but until now there were still some functions (such as lowering the landing gear and deploying the chute) that could only be performed manually.

With some new wiring NASA could at least attempt to bring a damaged shuttle back to earth and perhaps save a vehicle worth billions of dollars.

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POSTED IN: Space Technology, aviation