<P> The Shuttle is the only winged manned spacecraft to have achieved orbit and landing, and the only reusable manned space vehicle that has ever made multiple flights into orbit (the Russian shuttle Buran was very similar and was designed to have the same capabilities but made only one unmanned spaceflight before it was cancelled). Its missions involved carrying large payloads to various orbits (including segments to be added to the International Space Station (ISS)), providing crew rotation for the space station, and performing service missions . The orbiter also recovered satellites and other payloads (e.g., from the ISS) from orbit and returned them to Earth, though its use in this capacity was rare . Each vehicle was designed with a projected lifespan of 100 launches, or 10 years' operational life, though original selling points on the shuttles were over 150 launches and over a 15 - year operational span with a' launch per month' expected at the peak of the program, but extensive delays in the development of the International Space Station never created such a peak demand for frequent flights . </P> <P> Although the concept had been explored since the late 1960s, the program formally commenced in 1972, and was the sole focus of NASA's manned operations after the final Apollo and Skylab flights in the mid-1970s . The Shuttle was originally conceived of and presented to the public in 1972 as a' Space Truck' which would, among other things, be used to build a United States space station in low Earth orbit during the 1980s and then be replaced by a new vehicle by the early 1990s . The stalled plans for a U.S. space station evolved into the International Space Station and were formally initiated in 1983 by U.S. President Ronald Reagan, but the ISS suffered from long delays, design changes and cost over-runs and forced the service life of the Space Shuttle to be extended several times until 2011 when it was finally retired--serving twice as long than it was originally designed to do . In 2004, according to the President George W. Bush's Vision for Space Exploration, use of the Space Shuttle was to be focused almost exclusively on completing assembly of the ISS, which was far behind schedule at that point . </P> <P> The first experimental orbiter Enterprise was a high - altitude glider, launched from the back of a specially modified Boeing 747, only for initial atmospheric landing tests (ALT). Enterprise's first test flight was on February 18, 1977, only five years after the Shuttle program was formally initiated; leading to the launch of the first space - worthy shuttle Columbia on April 12, 1981 on STS - 1 . The Space Shuttle program finished with its last mission, STS - 135 flown by Atlantis, in July 2011, retiring the final Shuttle in the fleet . The Space Shuttle program formally ended on August 31, 2011 . </P> <P> Since the Shuttle's retirement, many of its original duties are performed by an assortment of government and private vessels . The European ATV Automated Transfer Vehicle supplied the ISS between 2008 and 2015 . Classified military missions are being flown by the US Air Force's unmanned space plane, the X-37B . By 2012, cargo to the International Space Station was already being delivered commercially under NASA's Commercial Resupply Services by SpaceX's partially reusable Dragon spacecraft, followed by Orbital Sciences' Cygnus spacecraft in late 2013 . Crew service to the ISS is currently provided by the Russian Soyuz while work on the Commercial Crew Development program proceeds; the first crewed flight of this is planned for December 2018, on the SpaceX Falcon 9 with Dragon 2 crew capsule . For missions beyond low Earth orbit, NASA is building the Space Launch System and the Orion spacecraft . </P>

The space shuttle program began with the flight of the challenger apollo mercury columbia explorer