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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – A tugboat sits alongside the Pegasus Barge which is moored in a secure area of the Turn Basin in the Launch Complex 39 area at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The 266-foot-long and 50-foot-wide barge will be towed to Stennis by NASA's Freedom Star ship. Since being delivered to NASA in 1999, Pegasus sailed 41 times and transported 31 shuttle external fuel tanks from Michoud Assembly Facility near New Orleans to Kennedy.    The barge will leave Kennedy, perhaps for the final time. Both the barge and shuttle equipment will remain in storage until their specific future uses are determined. The SSMEs themselves will be transported to Stennis separately for use with the agency’s new heavy-lift rocket, the Space Launch System. The work is part of the Space Shuttle Program’s transition and retirement processing. For more information about Shuttle Transition and Retirement, visit http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/transition/home/index.html. Photo credit: NASA/Cory Huston KSC-2011-7702

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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – A tugboat sits alongside the Pegasus Barge which is moored in a secure area of the Turn Basin in the Launch Complex 39 area at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The 266-foot-long and 50-foot-wide barge will be towed to Stennis by NASA's Freedom Star ship. Since being delivered to NASA in 1999, Pegasus sailed 41 times and transported 31 shuttle external fuel tanks from Michoud Assembly Facility near New Orleans to Kennedy. The barge will leave Kennedy, perhaps for the final time. Both the barge and shuttle equipment will remain in storage until their specific future uses are determined. The SSMEs themselves will be transported to Stennis separately for use with the agency’s new heavy-lift rocket, the Space Launch System. The work is part of the Space Shuttle Program’s transition and retirement processing. For more information about Shuttle Transition and Retirement, visit http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/transition/home/index.html. Photo credit: NASA/Cory Huston KSC-2011-7702

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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – A tugboat sits alongside the Pegasus Barge which is moored in a secure area of the Turn Basin in the Launch Complex 39 area at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The 266-foot-long and 50-foot-wide barge will be towed to Stennis by NASA's Freedom Star ship. Since being delivered to NASA in 1999, Pegasus sailed 41 times and transported 31 shuttle external fuel tanks from Michoud Assembly Facility near New Orleans to Kennedy. The barge will leave Kennedy, perhaps for the final time. Both the barge and shuttle equipment will remain in storage until their specific future uses are determined. The SSMEs themselves will be transported to Stennis separately for use with the agency’s new heavy-lift rocket, the Space Launch System. The work is part of the Space Shuttle Program’s transition and retirement processing. For more information about Shuttle Transition and Retirement, visit http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/transition/home/index.html. Photo credit: NASA/Cory Huston

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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1999
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NASA
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Public Domain Dedication (CC0)

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