KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FLA. - Tugboats in front and behind maneuver the Pegasus barge out of the Turn Basin into the Banana River on its way to Port Canaveral. The Pegasus is leaving NASA Kennedy Space Center for the Michoud Assembly Plant in Mississippi to get the external tank for the next shuttle mission, STS-121. To make the round trip from the port, the barge is towed by one of the solid rocket booster retrieval ships. The tank has been undergoing inspection and maintenance at the assembly plant. Space Shuttle Discovery is scheduled to launch in May. Photo credit: NASA/Debbie Kiger KSC-06pd0277
Summary
KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FLA. - Tugboats in front and behind maneuver the Pegasus barge out of the Turn Basin into the Banana River on its way to Port Canaveral. The Pegasus is leaving NASA Kennedy Space Center for the Michoud Assembly Plant in Mississippi to get the external tank for the next shuttle mission, STS-121. To make the round trip from the port, the barge is towed by one of the solid rocket booster retrieval ships. The tank has been undergoing inspection and maintenance at the assembly plant. Space Shuttle Discovery is scheduled to launch in May. Photo credit: NASA/Debbie Kiger
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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