
At the conclusion of the mission, the orbiter fired its OMS to deorbit and reenter the atmosphere. The SRBs were jettisoned before the vehicle reached orbit, while the main engines continued to operate, and the ET was jettisoned after main engine cutoff and just before orbit insertion, which used the orbiter's two Orbital Maneuvering System (OMS) engines. The Space Shuttle was launched vertically, like a conventional rocket, with the two SRBs operating in parallel with the orbiter's three main engines, which were fueled from the ET.

Space Shuttle components include the Orbiter Vehicle (OV) with three clustered Rocketdyne RS-25 main engines, a pair of recoverable solid rocket boosters (SRBs), and the expendable external tank (ET) containing liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. The Space Shuttle fleet's total mission time was 1,323 days. Operational missions launched numerous satellites, interplanetary probes, and the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), conducted science experiments in orbit, participated in the Shuttle- Mir program with Russia, and participated in the construction and servicing of the International Space Station (ISS). They launched from the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida. Five complete Space Shuttle orbiter vehicles were built and flown on a total of 135 missions from 1981 to 2011. The first ( STS-1) of four orbital test flights occurred in 1981, leading to operational flights ( STS-5) beginning in 1982. Its official program name was Space Transportation System (STS), taken from a 1969 plan for a system of reusable spacecraft where it was the only item funded for development.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as part of the Space Shuttle program.

The Space Shuttle is a retired, partially reusable low Earth orbital spacecraft system operated from 1981 to 2011 by the U.S.
