KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FLA. - Henry "Hank" Hartsfield Jr. (right) accepts congratulations from Al Worden, U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame member and chairman of the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation. The occasion is the 2006 induction ceremony for the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame, held in the Apollo/Saturn V Center. The inductees for 2006 are former NASA astronauts Hartsfield, Brewster H. Shaw Jr. and Charles F. Bolden Jr. Hartsfield flew on three space shuttle missions including STS-4, STS-41D and STS-61A, logging 482 hours in space. The U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame now includes 63 space explorers. Photo credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett KSC-06pd0789

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.