KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FLA. - Shuttle Launch Director Mike Leinbach answers reporters' questions in the RLV Hangar. Leinbach is overseeing assessment of the debris, seen in the background, as it is delivered to KSC. The Columbia Reconstruction Project team is identifying pieces and placing them on a grid approximating the shape of the orbiter. About 25 percent of the orbiter has been delivered to the hangar. KSC-03pd0854

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.