The entrance, shown here, to the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge Visitor Information Center is on Beach Rd. (SR 402), which skirts the north end of the Shuttle Landing Facility at Kennedy Space Center. The refuge, which shares a boundary with the center, is a habitat for more than 310 species of birds, 25 mammals, 117 fishes and 65 amphibians and reptiles. The visitor information center offers a variety of interesting displays that describe the wildlife and habitats of the refuge. It is open weekdays from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekends, but closed on federal holidays and Sundays from May through October KSC-99pc0138

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.