CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – Jeremy Schwarz, left, quality assurance technician, and Mike Williams, right, a thermal protection system technician, both with United Space Alliance, prepare the right wing of space shuttle Endeavour for tile bonding. Endeavour is inside Orbiter Processing Facility-2 at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Ongoing transition and retirement activities are preparing the spacecraft for public display at the California Science Center in Los Angeles. Endeavour flew 25 missions during its 19-year career. Photo credit: NASA/Cory Huston KSC-2012-1938

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.