A member of the STS-83 flight crew enters the crew hatch of the Space Shuttle Columbia with the help of the white room crew during Terminal Countdown Demonstration Test (TCDT) exercises for that mission. Members of the white room crew are (from left): Steve Crosbie, Rene Arriens and Bob Saulnier. The STS-83 crew members for the 16-day Microgravity Science Laboratory-1 (MSL-1) mission are: Mission Commander James D. Halsell, Jr.; Pilot Susan L. Still; Payload Commander Janice Voss; Mission Specialists Michael L. Gernhardt and Donald A. Thomas; and Payload Specialists Gregory T. Linteris and Roger K. Crouch KSC-97pc463

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.