CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Media representatives gather on the Shuttle Landing Facility runway at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida to watch the landing of the shuttle carrier aircraft, or SCA, and its piggyback passenger space shuttle Endeavour. After making the three-day trip from California, touchdown at Kennedy was at 2:44 p.m. EST. The SCA is a modified Boeing 747 jetliner. Endeavour landed at Edwards Air Force Base in California Nov. 30 to end mission STS-126. The return to Kennedy began Dec. 8 and took four days after stops across the country for fuel. The last stop was at Barksdale Air Force Base in Shreveport, La. Weather conditions en route and in Florida postponed the landing at Kennedy until Dec. 12. Photo credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett KSC-08pd3978

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KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FLA. -- With the Mate/Demate Device (MDD) on the left and the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) on the right, the Space Shuttle orbiter Atlantis approaches Runway 33 at KSC’s Shuttle Landing Facility for a scheduled touchdown at about 9:23 a.m. EST Jan. 22. When the orbiter lands, it will conclude the fifth Shuttle-Mir docking mission and return NASA astronaut John Blaha to Earth after four months in space. At main gear touchdown, the STS-81 mission duration will be 10 days, 4 hours, 55 minutes. This is the 34th KSC landing in Shuttle history. Mission Commander Michael A. Baker is steering Atlantis to a perfect landing, with help from Pilot Brent W. Jett, Jr. Other returning STS-81 crew members are Mission Specialists John M. Grunsfeld, Peter J. K. "Jeff" Wisoff and Marsha S. Ivins. Atlantis also brought back experiment samples from the Russian space station Mir for analysis on Earth KSC-97pc193

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FLA. - The Space Shuttle orbiter Atlantis is towed from the Orbiter Processing Facility (OPF) to the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB). The move will allow work to be performed in the OPF that can only be accomplished while the bay is empty. Work scheduled in the processing facility includes annual validation of the bay's cranes, work platforms, lifting mechanisms, and jack stands. Atlantis will remain in the VAB for about 10 days, then return to the OPF as work resumes to prepare it for launch in September 2004 on the first return-to-flight mission, STS-114.

STS-129 - EOM - Public domain NASA photogrpaph

STS-131 - Public domain NASA photogrpaph

STS-119 - EOM - Public domain NASA photogrpaph

STS-133 - EOM - Public domain NASA photogrpaph

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Media representatives gather on the Shuttle Landing Facility runway at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida to watch the landing of the shuttle carrier aircraft, or SCA, and its piggyback passenger space shuttle Endeavour. After making the three-day trip from California, touchdown at Kennedy was at 2:44 p.m. EST. The SCA is a modified Boeing 747 jetliner. Endeavour landed at Edwards Air Force Base in California Nov. 30 to end mission STS-126. The return to Kennedy began Dec. 8 and took four days after stops across the country for fuel. The last stop was at Barksdale Air Force Base in Shreveport, La. Weather conditions en route and in Florida postponed the landing at Kennedy until Dec. 12. Photo credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett KSC-08pd3978

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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Media representatives gather on the Shuttle Landing Facility runway at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida to watch the landing of the shuttle carrier aircraft, or SCA, and its piggyback passenger space shuttle Endeavour. After making the three-day trip from California, touchdown at Kennedy was at 2:44 p.m. EST. The SCA is a modified Boeing 747 jetliner. Endeavour landed at Edwards Air Force Base in California Nov. 30 to end mission STS-126. The return to Kennedy began Dec. 8 and took four days after stops across the country for fuel. The last stop was at Barksdale Air Force Base in Shreveport, La. Weather conditions en route and in Florida postponed the landing at Kennedy until Dec. 12. Photo credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett

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.