The BepiColombo orbiters, in orbits complementary to that of MESSENGER, will extend geochemical, spectral, and photometric mapping of the planet.
Atlantis is in final preparations in the Orbiter Processing Facility for the 34th and final time as she prepares to become the prized museum piece at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor complex.
And in 2003 a failure in the orbiter's heat shield, damaged by debris falling from the external tank onto the shuttle as it launched, would kill the crew of Columbia STS 107 during re-entry, 16 minutes from home.
The space shuttle could transport satellites and other craft in the orbiter's cargo bay for deployment in space.
During the mission, the astronauts aboard Discovery also carried out various experiments aboard the Spacehab module in the Orbiter's payload bay, and took part in a live bi-directional audio and downlink video hookup between themselves and the three Cosmonauts on board Mir, Valeri Polyakov, Viktor Afanasyev and Yury Usachev (flying Mir expeditions LD-4 and EO-15).
In addition, as occurred in the Challenger investigation, he said, the search will need to be extended "to identify all other potential failure modes and design weaknesses everywhere in the orbiter system, and engineer fixes for them".
In her first flight, aboard the Endeavour in June 1993, she helped conduct experiments during what was also the maiden voyage of the Spacehab module, a 9,600-pound 9,600-pound laboratory mounted in the orbiter's pressurized.
The seven Columbia astronauts were lost because foam insulation shedding from the external tank on liftoff punched a hole in the orbiter's wing, something that NASA engineers had assumed was not possible.
The Discovery was originally scheduled to lift off on Feb. 12, but was delayed several times over lingering concerns over valves that regulate the flow of hydrogen gas from the main engines in the orbiter to the external fuel tank.
With the fictional mission to Mars funded by an Indian billionaire, the play also explores India's increasingly important role in the future of space travel, illustrated recently by the Indian government's recent investment in an orbiter around Mars that cost less than the budget of the film Gravity to build.
