Space Shuttle

The Space Shuttle was a partially reusable low Earth orbital spacecraft system operated by NASA from 1981 to 2011. It consisted of five complete orbiter vehicles that launched on 135 missions, including the deployment of satellites, interplanetary probes, and the Hubble Space Telescope, and the construction and servicing of the International Space Station. The Space Shuttle fleet's total mission time was 1,323 days. The system included the Orbiter Vehicle, recoverable solid rocket boosters, and an expendable external tank, and was launched vertically before jettisoning the boosters and tank and reentering the atmosphere for a runway landing. Two of the operational orbiters, Challenger and Columbia, were lost in mission accidents, resulting in the deaths of 14 astronauts. The three surviving operational vehicles were retired from service in 2011, and the US relied on Russian Soyuz spacecraft to transport astronauts to the ISS until the launch of the Crew Dragon Demo-2 mission in 2020.learn more on wikipedia