KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FLA. -- Center Director Bill Parsons talks to the media in the NASA News Center Auditorium. He used the occasion to introduce himself and his expectations for the center. Parsons took over the helm of the Kennedy Space Center on Jan. 4 as the ninth director, succeeding James W. Kennedy, who is retiring from the agency. Parsons had served as deputy director under Kennedy during 2006. In 1990, Parsons joined the NASA team at Kennedy Space Center as a launch site support manager in the Shuttle Operations Directorate. He also worked as an executive management intern and later as the shuttle flow director of the Shuttle Operations Directorate at Kennedy. In 1996, he became manager of the Space Station Hardware Integration Office at Kennedy. Photo credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett KSC-07pd0042

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.