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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. --    After dark, at the Shuttle Landing Facility, or SLF, at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, a worker on the mate/demate device prepares to attach the sling that will lift the shuttle away from the shuttle carrier aircraft, or SCA, underneath. The SCA carried the shuttle piggyback from California, where Endeavour landed Nov. 30 to end the STS-126 mission.  When Endeavour is on the ground, it will be towed via the two-mile tow-way from the SLF by a diesel-powered tractor to the Orbiter Processing Facility where it will begin preparations for its next mission, STS-127, targeted for May 2009. Photo credit: NASA/Jack Pfaller KSC-08pd4005

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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- After dark, at the Shuttle Landing Facility, or SLF, at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, a worker on the mate/demate device prepares to attach the sling that will lift the shuttle away from the shuttle carrier aircraft, or SCA, underneath. The SCA carried the shuttle piggyback from California, where Endeavour landed Nov. 30 to end the STS-126 mission. When Endeavour is on the ground, it will be towed via the two-mile tow-way from the SLF by a diesel-powered tractor to the Orbiter Processing Facility where it will begin preparations for its next mission, STS-127, targeted for May 2009. Photo credit: NASA/Jack Pfaller KSC-08pd4005

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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- After dark, at the Shuttle Landing Facility, or SLF, at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, a worker on the mate/demate device prepares to attach the sling that will lift the shuttle away from the shuttle carrier aircraft, or SCA, underneath. The SCA carried the shuttle piggyback from California, where Endeavour landed Nov. 30 to end the STS-126 mission. When Endeavour is on the ground, it will be towed via the two-mile tow-way from the SLF by a diesel-powered tractor to the Orbiter Processing Facility where it will begin preparations for its next mission, STS-127, targeted for May 2009. Photo credit: NASA/Jack Pfaller

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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12/12/2008
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