KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FLA. - - In the Orbiter Processing Facility, STS-114 Mission Specialists Andrew Thomas, Soichi Noguchi and Charles Camarda greet astronaut John Young (far right), who flew on the first flight of Space Shuttle Columbia with Robert Crippen. Behind Camarda is Pilot James Kelly. Young is associate director, Technical, at Johnson Space Center. Noguchi represents the Japanese Aerospace and Exploration Agency. The STS-114 crew is spending time becoming familiar with Shuttle and mission equipment. The mission is Logistics Flight 1, which is scheduled to deliver supplies and equipment plus the external stowage platform to the International Space Station.

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.