THE SPACE SHUTTLE PROGRAM
Humanity's first reusable crewed spacecraft
"The Space Shuttle's earned its place in history, and it's come to a final stop. The United States of America does not stop exploring." — Commander Chris Ferguson, STS-135 landing, July 21, 2011
- Develop and operate the world's first reusable orbital spacecraft, reducing the cost of access to space through hardware recovery and refurbishment.
- Serve as the primary US launch vehicle for government, commercial, and scientific payloads throughout the 1980s and 1990s.
- Deploy, retrieve, and service scientific assets in low Earth orbit — most critically the Hubble Space Telescope.
- Conduct orbital research in life sciences, materials science, Earth observation, and astrophysics through extended-duration missions.
- Support construction and resupply of the International Space Station, serving as the primary assembly vehicle and crew transport for the ISS.
Conceived in the early 1970s as a low-cost successor to the Saturn era, the Space Shuttle was NASA's most complex human spacecraft and the world's first operational reusable orbital vehicle. Five orbiters flew: Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavour. Together they carried out 135 missions over 30 years, deploying satellites, conducting science, docking with the Russian Mir space station, and assembling the International Space Station over 37 dedicated construction flights.
The program suffered two catastrophic losses — Challenger in 1986 and Columbia in 2003 — that claimed fourteen lives and reshaped NASA's approach to safety and risk management. Its final mission, STS-135, landed at Kennedy Space Center on July 21, 2011, ending an era of American human spaceflight until the arrival of commercial crew vehicles in 2020.