Pilot Greg Johnson and Mission Specialist Mike Fincke of Space Shuttle Endeavour's final mission STS-134 come to Ames Research Center to share their experiences, answer questions and sign autographs during a afternoon with the staff. Astronauts Johnson and Fincke present photo to Ames Associate Director Steve Zornetzer. ARC-2011-ACD11-0143-020

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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Mercury astronauts, John Glenn, left, and Scott Carpenter, talk to Mercury Project workers and other guests in the Astronaut Encounter Theater at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida. The pair participated in 50th anniversary events at the launch site of Glenn's first orbital flight aboard NASA's Friendship 7 capsule, which launched Feb. 20, 1962, aboard an Atlas rocket. At right, is Jack King, who was chief of Kennedy's Public Information Office during Project Mercury. Glenn's launch aboard an Atlas rocket took with it the hopes of an entire nation and ushered in a new era of space travel that eventually led to Americans walking on the moon by the end of the 1960s. Glenn soon was followed into orbit by Carpenter, Walter Schirra and Gordon Cooper. Their fellow Mercury astronauts Alan Shepard and Virgil "Gus" Grissom flew earlier suborbital flights. Deke Slayton, a member of NASA's original Mercury 7 astronauts, was grounded by a medical condition until the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project in 1975. Photo credit: Kim Shiflett KSC-2012-1476

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Pilot Greg Johnson and Mission Specialist Mike Fincke of Space Shuttle Endeavour's final mission STS-134 come to Ames Research Center to share their experiences, answer questions and sign autographs during a afternoon with the staff. Astronauts Johnson and Fincke present photo to Ames Associate Director Steve Zornetzer. ARC-2011-ACD11-0143-020

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Pilot Greg Johnson and Mission Specialist Mike Fincke of Space Shuttle Endeavour's final mission STS-134 come to Ames Research Center to share their experiences, answer questions and sign autographs during a afternoon with the staff. Astronauts Johnson and Fincke present photo to Ames Associate Director Steve Zornetzer.

Space Shuttle Program

The Space Shuttle program was the United States government's manned launch vehicle program from 1981 to 2011, administered by NASA and officially beginning in 1972. The Space Shuttle system—composed of an orbiter launched with two reusable solid rocket boosters and a disposable external fuel tank— carried up to eight astronauts and up to 50,000 lb (23,000 kg) of payload into low Earth orbit (LEO). When its mission was complete, the orbiter would re-enter the Earth's atmosphere and lands as a glider. Although the concept had been explored since the late 1960s, the program formally commenced in 1972 and was the focus of NASA's manned operations after the final Apollo and Skylab flights in the mid-1970s. It started with the launch of the first shuttle Columbia on April 12, 1981, on STS-1. and finished with its last mission, STS-135 flown by Atlantis, in July 2011.