Published on Feb 18, 2015
NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center, formerly Dryden, on Edwards Air Force Base spent nearly three months demolishing its iconic space shuttle Mate-Demate Device (MDD), one of the center's last vestiges of the shuttle program that ended in 2011. NASA transitioned to a parallel path for human spaceflight exploration -- U.S. commercial companies providing access to low-Earth orbit and NASA preparing deep space exploration missions to an asteroid and Mars.
The large, gantry-like MDD structure was used for servicing the space shuttles after they landed at Edwards Air Force Base, lifting and placing them on NASA's modified Boeing 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft for their ferry flights back to agency's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Constructed in 1976 at a cost of $1.7 million, the MDD was first used in 1977 for the prototype shuttle orbiter Enterprise's Approach and Landing Tests. It was last used for turnaround operations of the shuttle Discovery following its STS-128 mission that landed at Edwards in 2009.
The large, gantry-like MDD structure was used for servicing the space shuttles after they landed at Edwards Air Force Base, lifting and placing them on NASA's modified Boeing 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft for their ferry flights back to agency's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Constructed in 1976 at a cost of $1.7 million, the MDD was first used in 1977 for the prototype shuttle orbiter Enterprise's Approach and Landing Tests. It was last used for turnaround operations of the shuttle Discovery following its STS-128 mission that landed at Edwards in 2009.
Armstrong Shuttle Mate-Demate Device dismantle time-lapse - YouTube
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