Can Space Shuttle land by itself without crew?I mean if the present crew goes to ISS if they find it damaged?

Answer 1

...wrong! The STS (Space Shuttle) can be remotely operated for an entire mission...from lift-off, to de-orbit, flare, touch down, and roll-out. (Somebody has to open the door, though.)

The Russian Buran (Space Shuttle), which is a virtual carbon-copy of NASA's Shuttle, has flown ONLY unmanned remote-controlled missions.

http://www.newscientistspace.com/article/dn9415-nasa-prepared-for-shuttle-emergency.html

Down time
The ISS would offer the shuttle crew 81 days of oxygen – more than enough to wait for a rescue flight by the shuttle Atlantis. Atlantis is being prepared for a 17 August rescue launch.

But any time spent on the station would drag, says Kelly. "You wouldn't be able to do any exercise – you'd be trying to keep your metabolic rate very low to save consumables," he told New Scientist. "And I'm not bringing a book with me."

And there would be no rescue for Discovery. Even though the orbiter has rudimentary remote control capabilities, like a giant Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, NASA will not attempt to land it under remote control.

Remote control
That is because unlike a military UAV, the orbiter does not have nose-cone video camera that would allow a pilot on the ground to steer it to a landing. Relying on onboard approach equipment would also be too risky – any damage the shuttle had already endured might impair its ability to be controlled remotely. The fact that it might also shed debris means NASA could not risk flying it over populated areas.

“Although there is a limited capability to try and fly the shuttle to a landing under remote control, it’s not a very fault-tolerant procedure,” says Dick Richards, deputy shuttle programme manager at Boeing, which builds the orbiters, and a former astronaut. "So the plan would be to de-orbit Discovery."

In this process, the orbiter would be jettisoned from the ISS and allowed to splash down in the Pacific Ocean. But such a loss would probably mean the end of the entire shuttle programme, says NASA Administrator Mike Griffin.

Answer 2

No it cannot. This has happened twice this year already. An unmanned spacecraft sent by NASA is either scuttled in space as debris, or is close enough to our atmospehre to be pulled in by gravitational pull for reentry. During reentry, without the proper control and trajectory, most of the shuttle will burn up in our atmoshere. The resulting debris will find its way to earth, such as the unmanned ORBITER did in March this year. Some of the pieces of this shuttle landed in a rural area of Poland on reentry. To combat this problem, NASA has been experimenting with small charges placed in future shuttles that will break apart the body of the craft to ease burning in our atmosphere in such cases for reentry.

Answer 3

It absolutely can! The whole re-entry is made on autopilot - no human can provide the accuracy for such an approach in such a fragile airframe. You have to remember that at 18000mph even a small change in attitude will have huge g-forces associated with it - thus automatic control. It is possible to manually fly it in though. The pilots take over the orbiter when they are about 10 miles out.... but dont have to - autoland feature is probably integrated into the system... hell, most airliners have autoland system, i dont see why the orbiter woudnt.

Answer 4

Odd, the original rockets were made so monkeys could fly them. I understand that NASA does have some control over the shuttle's controls...

Answer 5

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Answer 6

No. Aircraft can not fly themselves with that precision quite yet.

Answer 7

I believe it already does!


Hmmm I guess it doesn't but the mechanics are there to try and do it.

Answer 8

I dont think it can. you need some one to guied it in if the computer went bad.

Answer 9

Wouldn't that be cool!

But, no, it can't.

Aloha

Answer 10

No