CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- A "towback" vehicle slowly pulls shuttle Endeavour from the Shuttle Landing Facility to Orbiter Processing Facility-1 at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. A purge unit that pumps conditioned air into a shuttle after landing is connected to Endeavour's aft end. In the background is the massive Vehicle Assembly Building. Once inside the processing facility, Endeavour will be prepared for future public display. Endeavour's final return from space completed the 16-day, 6.5-million-mile STS-134 mission. Main gear touchdown was at 2:34:51 a.m. EDT, followed by nose gear touchdown at 2:35:04 a.m., and wheelstop at 2:35:36 a.m. Endeavour and its crew delivered the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer-2 (AMS) and the Express Logistics Carrier-3 (ELC-3) to the International Space Station. AMS will help researchers understand the origin of the universe and search for evidence of dark matter, strange matter and antimatter from the station. ELC-3 carried spare parts that will sustain station operations once the shuttles are retired from service. STS-134 was the 25th and final flight for Endeavour, which spent 299 days in space, orbited Earth 4,671 times and traveled 122,883,151 miles. Photo credit: NASA/Jack Pfaller KSC-2011-4273

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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – The Ares I-X forward segment leaves the Rotation, Surge and Processing Facility at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. It is being transported to the Vehicle Assembly Building for mating with the aft center and aft segments already stacked.Part of the Constellation Program, the Ares I-X is the test vehicle for the Ares I, which is the essential core of a space transportation system that eventually will carry crewed missions back to the moon, on to Mars and out into the solar system . The Ares I-X flight test is targeted for no earlier than Aug. 30. Photo credit: NASA/Troy Cryder KSC-2009-4156

STS-132 - LAUNCH - Public domain NASA photogrpaph

STS-36 Atlantis, OV-104, leaves VAB during its rollout to KSC LC Pad 39A

STS-119 - EOM - Public domain NASA photogrpaph

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FLA. - The crawler transporter slowly moves the Mobile Launcher Platform (MLP), carrying a set of twin solid rocket boosters, away from the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) in support of engineering analysis vibration tests on the crawler and MLP. The crawler is moving at various speeds up to 1 mph in an effort to achieve vibration data gathering goals as it leaves the VAB and then returns. The boosters are braced at the top for stability. The primary purpose of these rollout tests is to gather data to develop future maintenance requirements on the transport equipment and the flight hardware. Various parts of the MLP and crawler transporter have been instrumented with vibration data collection equipment.

STS-116 - EOM - Public domain NASA photogrpaph

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- A "towback" vehicle slowly pulls shuttle Endeavour from the Shuttle Landing Facility to Orbiter Processing Facility-1 at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. A purge unit that pumps conditioned air into a shuttle after landing is connected to Endeavour's aft end. In the background is the massive Vehicle Assembly Building. Once inside the processing facility, Endeavour will be prepared for future public display. Endeavour's final return from space completed the 16-day, 6.5-million-mile STS-134 mission. Main gear touchdown was at 2:34:51 a.m. EDT, followed by nose gear touchdown at 2:35:04 a.m., and wheelstop at 2:35:36 a.m. Endeavour and its crew delivered the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer-2 (AMS) and the Express Logistics Carrier-3 (ELC-3) to the International Space Station. AMS will help researchers understand the origin of the universe and search for evidence of dark matter, strange matter and antimatter from the station. ELC-3 carried spare parts that will sustain station operations once the shuttles are retired from service. STS-134 was the 25th and final flight for Endeavour, which spent 299 days in space, orbited Earth 4,671 times and traveled 122,883,151 miles. Photo credit: NASA/Jack Pfaller KSC-2011-4273

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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- A "towback" vehicle slowly pulls shuttle Endeavour from the Shuttle Landing Facility to Orbiter Processing Facility-1 at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. A purge unit that pumps conditioned air into a shuttle after landing is connected to Endeavour's aft end. In the background is the massive Vehicle Assembly Building. Once inside the processing facility, Endeavour will be prepared for future public display. Endeavour's final return from space completed the 16-day, 6.5-million-mile STS-134 mission. Main gear touchdown was at 2:34:51 a.m. EDT, followed by nose gear touchdown at 2:35:04 a.m., and wheelstop at 2:35:36 a.m. Endeavour and its crew delivered the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer-2 (AMS) and the Express Logistics Carrier-3 (ELC-3) to the International Space Station. AMS will help researchers understand the origin of the universe and search for evidence of dark matter, strange matter and antimatter from the station. ELC-3 carried spare parts that will sustain station operations once the shuttles are retired from service. STS-134 was the 25th and final flight for Endeavour, which spent 299 days in space, orbited Earth 4,671 times and traveled 122,883,151 miles. Photo credit: NASA/Jack Pfaller

Space Shuttle Program

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.