KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FLA. - - In the RLV Hangar at KSC, examining a piece of debris from Space Shuttle Columbia are former payload specialist Dr. Roger Crouch (left), Shuttle Launch Director Mike Leinbach (right, pointing) and NASA Chief of Staff and White House liaison Courtney Stadd (right). The debris is one of more than 35,000 pieces collected so far. More than 1,218 pieces have been identified. The search of more than 500,000 acres of primary recovery area for Columbia material has passed the halfway mark. To date about 28 percent of Columbia, by weight, has been delivered to the hangar. KSC-03pd0927

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.