who were the astronauts on it?
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16. what are the three phases of space shuttle flight Design Phase, Firing Phase, Landing phase what exactly is this space vehicle for? The Space Shuttle was a partially reusable low Earth orbital spacecraft system can you name a few people who were involved in launching this? UNANSWERABLE are there any accidents associated with it? Yes,  STS-51-L disintegrated 73 seconds after launch, due to the failure of the right SRB, killing all seven astronauts on board "Challenger". what is the shuttle program mentioned above about? It was the program to carry out routine transportation for Earth-to-orbit crew and cargo; as well as the final flight of Space Shuttle "Challenger". which was the first shuttle to be launched in this program? "Columbia" when was it launched? April 12, 1981
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Space Shuttle program [SEP] Background
Various shuttle concepts had been explored since the late 1960s. The program formally commenced in 1972, becoming the sole focus of NASA's human spaceflight operations after the Apollo, Skylab, and Apollo-Soyuz programs in 1975. The Shuttle was originally conceived of and presented to the public in 1972 as a 'Space Truck' which would, among other things, be used to build a United States space station in low Earth orbit during the 1980s and then be replaced by a new vehicle by the early 1990s. The stalled plans for a U.S. space station evolved into the International Space Station and were formally initiated in 1983 by President Ronald Reagan, but the ISS suffered from long delays, design changes and cost over-runs and forced the service life of the Space Shuttle to be extended several times until 2011 when it was finally retired—serving twice as long than it was originally designed to do.