CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – Workers secure the high-fidelity space shuttle model to the structure that will cradle the model on its journey from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida to Johnson Space Center's visitor center in Houston atop a barge. The model was built in Apopka, Fla., by Guard-Lee and installed at Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in 1993.The model has been parked at the turn basin the past five months to allow the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex to begin building a new facility next year to display space shuttle Atlantis in 2013. For more information about Johnson’s visitor center, called Space Center Houston, visit http://www.spacecenter.org. Photo credit: NASA/Amanda Diller KSC-2012-2961

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.