KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. -- At the Shuttle Landing Facility, workers prepare NASA's Genesis spacecraft for transport to the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility in KSC's industrial area where it will undergo final preparations;for launch.; The spacecraft arrived aboard an Air Force C-17 aircraft from Denver, Colo., where it was built for NASA by Lockheed Martin Astronautics.; Genesis is designed to capture samples of the ions and elements in the solar wind and return them to Earth for scientists to use to determine the exact composition of the Sun and the solar system's origin. Launch aboard a Boeing Delta II rocket is scheduled for July 30 at 12:36 p.m. EDT.; NASA's Genesis project in managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif KSC-01pp1050

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.