Shannon Airport Was Considered a NASA Space Shuttle Emergency Landing Site, Newly Released Irish State Papers Show
If you’ve ever passed through Shannon Airport, it’s easy to think of it as a gateway for transatlantic travel—a place built for long runways, strong winds, and big aircraft. But newly released Irish State Papers suggest the Co Clare runway once sat inside a far more dramatic contingency plan: a last-resort landing option for NASA’s Space Shuttle, should a launch go catastrophically wrong. Documents reported in Irish media over the weekend indicate U.S. officials asked the Irish Government in 1995 to allow Shannon to be used as an additional emergency landing location. In a worst‑case scenario involving multiple main engine