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Space Shuttle Project, Marshall Space Flight Center
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The Space Shuttle Orbiter Columbia's (STS-75) mission came to a close as the orbiter touched down on Runway 33 of Kennedy Space Center's Shuttle Landing Facility on March 9, 1996. Off to the right is the Vehicle Assembly Building and the Shuttle Training Aircraft (STA). The Mate/Demate Device (MDM) is at left. This Marshall Space Flight Center managed mission lasted 15 days and 17-hours, during which time the seven member crew conducted microgravity research with the U.S. Microgravity Payload (USMP-3), which flew for the third time. The other primary payload was the Tethered Satellite System (TSS-1R),a reflight from an earlier mission, but the satellite was lost when the tether broke just short of its fully deployed length of nearly 13 miles.
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.
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