CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – In the Space Station Processing Facility at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, STS-127 Mission Specialist Christopher Cassidy looks at a piece of equipment to be used on the mission. Other crew members are Commander Mark Polansky, Pilot Doug Hurley and Mission Specialists Tom Marshburn, Dave Wolf, Julie Payette and Tim Kopra. The mission payload includes the Japanese Experiment Module, or JEM, Extended Facility and the Inter-orbit Communication System Extended Facility, or ICS-EF. Equipment familiarization is part of a Crew Equipment Interface Test. The payload will be launched to the International Space Station aboard the space shuttle Endeavour on the STS-127 mission, targeted for launch on May 15, 2009. Photo credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett KSC-08pd3225
Summary
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – In the Space Station Processing Facility at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, STS-127 Mission Specialist Christopher Cassidy looks at a piece of equipment to be used on the mission. Other crew members are Commander Mark Polansky, Pilot Doug Hurley and Mission Specialists Tom Marshburn, Dave Wolf, Julie Payette and Tim Kopra. The mission payload includes the Japanese Experiment Module, or JEM, Extended Facility and the Inter-orbit Communication System Extended Facility, or ICS-EF. Equipment familiarization is part of a Crew Equipment Interface Test. The payload will be launched to the International Space Station aboard the space shuttle Endeavour on the STS-127 mission, targeted for launch on May 15, 2009. Photo credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett
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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