| A | B |
|---|
| Orbiter | Airplane part that carries crew |
| Solid Rocket Boosters (SRB's) | 2 white rockets used for 2 minutes only at liftoff |
| External Tank (ET) | Orange tank with H and O fuel for orbiter's 3 main engines |
| Payload Bay | Back part of orbiter for cargo and spacewalks |
| Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) | 52 story building where shutte parts are mated |
| Crawler | Huge machine that carries shuttle to launch pad at 1 mile per hour |
| 39A and 39B | Names of Shuttle Launch Pads |
| East | Direction toward which all shuttles launch to take advantage of Earth's rotation |
| 2 minutes | Amount of time SRB's run before falling into ocean |
| Orange External Tank | Only part of shuttle system not reused |
| 17,500 miles per hour or 4 miles per second | Orbital velocity |
| Weightlessness | What astronauts feel when orbiting by falling around Earth |
| Newton's 3rd Law | Action/Reaction Law that causes liftoff |
| 8 minutes | Amount of time it takes to reach orbit |
| Parachutes | What SRB's use to safely fall into ocean |
| Airplane/Glider (no engines) | The shuttle takes off like a rocket but it lands like one of these |
| 300,000 gallons of water | Sprayed on launch pad to reduce heat and vibrations just before liftoff |
| Atlantis, Discovery & Endeavor | Current orbiters in use |
| 90 minutes | Time it takes for shuttle to orbit Earth once |
| 16 (they see 16 sunrises and 16 sunsets everyday) | Number of orbits shuttle makes per day |
| International Space Station | Destination of most Shuttle flights this year |
| Challenger | Shuttle that blew up in 1986 |
| 3 main engines on orbiter | Part of the shuttle that ignites first 6 seconds before liftoff |
| Inertia of Motion and Gravity | What 2 forces keep the orbiter in orbit? |
| There is no air in space | Why doesn't the orbiter slow down in orbit? |
| Your mass is always constant | What happens to your mass when you are weightless? |
