NASA's space shuttle fleet began setting records with its first launch on April 12, 1981 and continued to set the bar high with excellence and patience through 30 years of missions. Starting with Columbia and continuing with Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour, the spacecrafts have carried people into orbit constantly, launched, recovered and repaired satellites, conducted experiments and built the largest structure in space, the International Space Station.

The final space shuttle mission, STS-135, ended July 21, 2011, when Atlantis landed at its home base, at John F. Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Today, NASA and the U.S. look forward to completely revolutionizing space exploration using the new technology that they have researched for the past 60 years.