KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FLA. - Pieces of debris of Space Shuttle Columbia are offloaded from a flatbed truck in the transfer aisle of the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB). The debris is being moved from the Columbia Debris Hangar to the VAB for permanent storage. More than 83,000 pieces of debris were shipped to KSC during search and recovery efforts in East Texas. That represents about 38 percent of the dry weight of Columbia, equaling almost 85,000 pounds.

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KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FLA. - In NASA Kennedy Space Center’s Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility, Boeing workers garbed in clean room suits get ready to move the third stage, or upper stage, for the New Horizons spacecraft. The third stage is a Boeing STAR 48 solid-propellant kick motor. The launch vehicle for New Horizons is the Atlas V rocket, scheduled to launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla., during a 35-day window that opens Jan. 11, and fly through the Pluto system as early as summer 2015. KSC-05pd2451

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- At NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, a technician uses a forklift to move the Optical Payload for Lasercomm Science, or OPALS, experiment to the air lock entrance at the Space Station Processing Facility. The optical technology demonstration experiment arrived from the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. NASA will use the International Space Station to test OPALS’ communications technology that could dramatically improve spacecraft communications, enhance commercial missions and strengthen transmission of scientific data. The experiment is slated to fly later this year aboard a SpaceX Dragon commercial resupply mission to the space station. The mission is expected to run 90 days after installation on the outside of the station. For more information about OPALS, visit: http://go.nasa.gov/10MMPDO. Photo credit: NASA/Jim Grossmann KSC-2013-3032

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FLA. - Pieces of debris of Space Shuttle Columbia are offloaded from a flatbed truck in the transfer aisle of the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB). The debris is being moved from the Columbia Debris Hangar to the VAB for permanent storage. More than 83,000 pieces of debris were shipped to KSC during search and recovery efforts in East Texas. That represents about 38 percent of the dry weight of Columbia, equaling almost 85,000 pounds.

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Summary

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.