CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- A wild turkey tries to blend into the palmetto underbrush near the Shuttle Landing Facility at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The center coexists with the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, which encompasses 140,000 acres. The refuge comprises a wide variety of habitats, including coastal dunes, saltwater estuaries and marshes, freshwater impoundments, scrub, pine flatwoods, and hardwood hammocks. These habitats provide sanctuary for more than 1,500 species of plants and animals, including more than 330 species of birds, 31 mammals, 117 fishes, and 65 amphibians and reptiles. For additional information about the refuge, visit http://www.fws.gov/merrittisland. Photo credit: NASA/Ben Smegelsky KSC-2014-2531

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.