Prior to STS-114, NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe declared that all future flights of the Space Shuttle would go to the ISS, precluding the possibility of executing the final Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission which had been scheduled before the Columbia accident, despite the fact that millions of dollars worth of upgrade equipment for ...

The Space Shuttle is a retired, partially reusable low Earth orbital spacecraft system operated from 1981 to 2011 by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as part of the Space Shuttle program.

Apr 9, 2025 · From the first launch on April 12, 1981 to the final landing on July 21, 2011, NASA's space shuttle fleet flew 135 missions, helped construct the International Space Station and inspired generations.

The Space Shuttle is a partially reusable low Earth orbital spacecraft system operated by NASA (the National Aeronautics and Space Administration). Its official program name was Space Transportation System (STS), taken from a 1969 plan for a system of reusable spacecraft of which it was the only item funded for development. [1]

Dec 5, 2016 · The thunder of rocket engines rolled across the east coast of Florida as the Space Shuttle Columbia, mission STS-9, launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) on the morning of November 28, 1983.

Jul 7, 2023 · President Ronald Reagan speaks to a crowd of more than 45,000 people at NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center following the landing of STS-4 on July 4, 1982. NASA Mission: Department of Defense/Continuous Flow Electrophoresis System (CFES)

6 days ago · First flight of Challenger includes the first spacewalk of the shuttle program and an important test of a new generation of spacesuits. On April 4, 1983, NASA launched the Space Shuttle Challenger on its first mission, STS-6, at the dawn of a new era in space exploration. It was the second operational flight of the program, following four …

Nov 3, 2022 · It was the fourth human spaceflight program carried out by the United States and NASA. The Space Shuttle, officially known as the Space Transportation System (STS), was the first reusable spacecraft to carry humans into orbit.

The Space Transportation System (STS), also known internally to NASA as the Integrated Program Plan (IPP), [1] was a proposed system of reusable crewed space vehicles envisioned in 1969 to support extended operations beyond the Apollo program (NASA appropriated the name for its Space Shuttle Program, the only component of the proposal to ...

Space Shuttle Artist Conception, Photo Courtesy NASA. Born in 1968 at the height of the Apollo program, the Space Shuttle was designed to fulfill two basic roles in NASA post-Apollo manned flight objectives.