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KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FLA. --   After landing at the KSC Shuttle Landing Facility, the shuttle carrier aircraft, or SCA, and its piggyback passenger Atlantis are towed to the mate/demate device that will put the orbiter back on the ground.  After a three-day, cross-country trip, the duo touched down at 8:27 a.m. EDT. The SCA is a modified Boeing 747 jetliner. Visible on Atlantis is the tail cone that covers and protects the main engines during the ferry flight.  Atlantis landed at Edwards Air Force Base in California to end mission STS-117.  The return to KSC began July 1 and included several stops across the country for fuel.  The last stop was at Ft. Campbell in Kentucky. Weather conditions over the last leg postponed the return trip until July 3.  After demate, Atlantis will then be towed to the Orbiter Processing Facility to begin processing for its next launch, mission STS-122 in December.  Photo credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett KSC-07pd1747

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KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FLA. -- After landing at the KSC Shuttle Landing Facility, the shuttle carrier aircraft, or SCA, and its piggyback passenger Atlantis are towed to the mate/demate device that will put the orbiter back on the ground. After a three-day, cross-country trip, the duo touched down at 8:27 a.m. EDT. The SCA is a modified Boeing 747 jetliner. Visible on Atlantis is the tail cone that covers and protects the main engines during the ferry flight. Atlantis landed at Edwards Air Force Base in California to end mission STS-117. The return to KSC began July 1 and included several stops across the country for fuel. The last stop was at Ft. Campbell in Kentucky. Weather conditions over the last leg postponed the return trip until July 3. After demate, Atlantis will then be towed to the Orbiter Processing Facility to begin processing for its next launch, mission STS-122 in December. Photo credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett KSC-07pd1747

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KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FLA. -- After landing at the KSC Shuttle Landing Facility, the shuttle carrier aircraft, or SCA, and its piggyback passenger Atlantis are towed to the mate/demate device that will put the orbiter back on the ground. After a three-day, cross-country trip, the duo touched down at 8:27 a.m. EDT. The SCA is a modified Boeing 747 jetliner. Visible on Atlantis is the tail cone that covers and protects the main engines during the ferry flight. Atlantis landed at Edwards Air Force Base in California to end mission STS-117. The return to KSC began July 1 and included several stops across the country for fuel. The last stop was at Ft. Campbell in Kentucky. Weather conditions over the last leg postponed the return trip until July 3. After demate, Atlantis will then be towed to the Orbiter Processing Facility to begin processing for its next launch, mission STS-122 in December. Photo credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett

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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03/07/2007
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NASA
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