Photo Gallery: Space Shuttle

U.S. space shuttle Discovery blasts off from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, heading for the International Space Station. The world's first reusable spacecraft, the space shuttle launches like a rocket, maneuvers in orbit like a spacecraft, and lands like an airplane. There are three shuttles now in operation: Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavour.

If weather conditions are favorable, returning space shuttles land at Kennedy Space Center. Florida storms, however, frequently divert the shuttle to Edwards Air Force Base in California. The shuttle then hitches a ride back to Florida on one of two commercial Boeing 747 airplanes modified for space shuttle piggybacking. Officially called shuttle carrier aircraft, the planes are bolstered with struts, stabilizers, and electronic monitors.

Observers watch as space shuttle Atlantis launches on a mission to deliver a new segment of the International Space Station's backbone, known as the truss, to the orbiting laboratory. The shuttle has the most reliable launch record of any rocket now in operation. Since 1981, it has boosted more than 3 million pounds (1.36 million kilograms) of cargo into orbit.

Space shuttle Atlantis takes flight on December 2, 1988, reaching a speed of over 17,000 miles an hour (27,000 kilometers an hour) in just 8.5 minutes. It will need such a velocity to defeat gravity and stay within the launch window—the time or set of times during a given day that the shuttle can launch, still meet mission objectives, and stay within safety guidelines.

On January 28, 1986, about 76 seconds into its launch, fragments of space shuttle Challenger are seen tumbling against a background of fire, smoke, and vaporized propellants. The left solid rocket booster continues to fly, still thrusting. Later investigations found that faulty O-rings were to blame for the accident, in which all seven crew members died. It was the first such tragedy in shuttle history.

On June 29, 1995, Atlantis became the first space shuttle to dock at Russia's Mir space station. A Russian Mir-19 cosmonaut snapped this photo on July 4 after a brief scientific joyride on the Soyuz spacecraft. This mission, STS-71, had a number of additional historic firsts: It was the hundredth U.S. human space launch conducted from Cape Canaveral, Florida, and it included the largest spacewalk ever undertaken in orbit and the first on-orbit change of shuttle crew.

Carrying Discovery, NASA's crawler transporter creeps along at 1 mile an hour (1.6 kilometers an hour). The trip from the Vehicle Assembly Building to the launchpad takes about five hours, and the crawler burns about 150 gallons (570 liters) of diesel fuel every mile.

Space shuttle Discovery touches down at the Shuttle Landing Facility at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The runway is 15,000 feet (4,600 meters) long and 300 feet (90 meters) wide, about twice the size of the average commercial runway. The pavement is made of 16-inch-thick (41-centimeter-thick), high-friction concrete grooved to drain water and add extra friction. Scientists went a little overboard with the friction at first and had to grind down the pavement a bit after several complicated landings.

Space shuttle Columbia, seen here launching in 1993, paved a brilliant legacy before its tragic end. The shuttle disintegrated over east Texas on its landing descent to Kennedy Space Center on February 1, 2003, at the conclusion of a microgravity research mission. Columbia was the oldest orbiter in the fleet and the first shuttle to orbit Earth. It was also the heaviest, weighing 178,000 pounds (80,800 kilograms).

Framed by billowing clouds of smoke, the space shuttle Endeavour launches at night on March 11, 2008, headed for the International Space Station. During the more than two-week trip, astronauts conducted spacewalks and started the installation of a modular laboratory. The mission, STS-123, was NASA's 122nd space shuttle mission.

Photograph courtesy NASA