The Concorde stretched between 6 and 10 inches during flight due to heating of the airframe, and featured a distinctive “drop-nose” front to improve pilots’ visibility on takeoff and landing. The most powerful pure jet engines flying commercially, the four Rolls- Royce/Snecma Olympus 593s provided more than 38,000 pounds of thrust each with “reheat,” which added fuel to the final stage of the engine to produce the extra power needed for takeoff and the transition to supersonic flight.

Flying at up to 60,000 feet, the Concorde provided passengers with a view of the curvature of the Earth. On flights taking off after sunset, passengers could see a sunrise in the west — the sun appeared to move backward in the sky, since the plane was essentially “outrunning” the sun. When flying west, passengers landed several hours before they took off.

The Blended Wing Body aircraft resembles a flying wing, with no fuselage. (NASA)

Obviously, it would be impossible in this article to highlight all of NASA’s aerospace innovations of the past 30 years, but the most significant is also the most technologically complex machine ever built — the Space Shuttle, or STS (Space Transportation System). The world’s first reusable spacecraft, the shuttle is also the first spacecraft to launch like a rocket and land like an airplane. The launch of the first shuttle, Columbia, in 1981, marked a new era in space travel. The shuttle would soon become the main cargo transport vehicle for construction of the International Space Station (ISS).

The three remaining shuttle orbiters — Atlantis, Discovery, and Endeavour — are significantly different today than when they were first launched. Following the Challenger and Columbia accidents, the orbiters have undergone thousands of modifications to improve safety, including engine and system improvements that have tripled the safety of flying the shuttle.