Can the space shuttle land without a pilot if the crew is incapacitated?

Question

I mean, is there a way to guide it from the ground or automatically by computer?

Answer 1

That depends on what you mean by "land"... From orbit?

From orbit... Doubt it. Someone has to be in the pilot's seat to initiate OMS burns. Someone from the ground can talk them through it, but they can't remote control that. The "lag" would be a problem.

Once the burn (rotate upside down first) was initiated and ended, the shuttle must be rotated right-side up again, then pushed to a slightly "nose high" attitude for proper re-entry. During re-entry, the heat ionizes the atmosphere that no radio wave can penetrate, thus you can't remote control anything from there. Again, pilot must be in the seat.

Once the shuttle is through the blackout, and slowed to almost landing speed, it can then be remote-controlled / autopiloted back to a landing site.

Though in reality, if the crew's incapacitated, in general, they will auto-dock with the International Space Station or just stay in orbit and await rescue via another shuttle. If they *have* to land ASAP, they'll rendezvous with ISS and use the Soyuz escape capsule if the shuttle can't land.

Answer 2

I will say yes. It have a very advanced computer system and there a lot to read. But, from the below "Copy and Paste" I think it can be controled by the ground crew.

Some of the DPS functions are as follows: support the guidance, navigation and control of the vehicle, including calculations of trajectories, SSME thrusting data and vehicle attitude control data; process vehicle data for the flight crew and for transmission to the ground and allow ground control of some vehicle systems via transmitted commands; check data transmission errors and crew control input errors; support annunciation of vehicle system failures and out-of-tolerance system conditions; support payloads with flight crew/software interface for activation, deployment, deactivation and retrieval; process rendezvous, tracking and data transmissions between payloads and the ground; and monitor and control vehicle subsystems.
http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/technology/sts-newsref/sts-av.html#sts-dps

Answer 3

No. the space shuttle essentially is a glider and is glided to the runway when it lands. it isn't remote controlled.\

Answer 4

Yes. It has an autoland system. The only flight of the soviet space shuttle was unmanned. It was almost a carbon copy of our shuttle

Answer 5

I doubt it.