The space shuttle was conceived in the 1970s as a reusable, more efficient alternative to the old throwaway space capsules that NASA used to get to the moon.

Space shuttle Columbia made the first shuttle flight on April 12, 1981.  By 1985, the fleet had grown to four spacecraft, but NASA was not able to hit its original target of dozens of missions per year -- the shuttles were just too complicated to refurbish that quickly. 

The agency's plans were completely derailed in 1986 when space shuttle Challenger was destroyed by an explosion during launch, killing seven astronauts.

After an investigation and a series of safety upgrades, shuttle flights resumed in 1988.  But the U.S. stopped using the fleet to launch military or commercial satellites.  The orbiters began visiting the Russian space station Mir, and beginning in 2000, were almost solely dedicated to construction of the international space station.

Columbia was retuning from a rare science-only mission in 2003 when it burned up during reentry.  Another seven astronauts died, flights were halted, and another investigation was launched.

After the loss of Columbia, then-president George W. Bush directed NASA to come up with a plan for the retirement and replacement of the aging fleet.  The space agency decided to use the shuttles to finish construction of the space station, then develop a new capsule-based system that could be launched on rockets derived from the shuttle boosters.

The first of those test flights took place in 2009 when the Ares I-X completed a suborbital flight from a converted space shuttle launch pad.  But the Obama administration plans to eliminate funding for that program and instead encourage private companies to develop spacecraft that can service the space station.

Meanwhile, the space shuttle fleet is down to its last missions.  Currently, Discovery is expected to make that last flight -- the 134th of the fleet -- in September.

NASA has reportedly promised to send Discovery to the National Air and Space Museum after retirement.  The agency is fielding requests from other museums for the rest of the fleet.

The space shuttle is an iconic image and for years has stood to symbolize American technological prowess in the aerospace field.  The Soviets even built a near-exact copy and flew it once before the USSR collapsed.

Since 1981, shuttle missions have included spacewalks, satellite repairs, probe launches, and more.  Perhaps the best-known mission featured the complicated capture and repair of the flawed Hubble Space Telescope -- a feat repeated several times.

By the time flights end, 36 flights will have been devoted to construction of the international space station, a football-field-sized orbiting lab that supports a full-time crew of six.

For all the deafening rocket launches, the technological wizardry, and the glorious images of Earth from orbit, the story of the exploration of space is, at its core, a human story. And no one knows that better than the journalists whose job it is to cover the Cape.

WTVT has been covering the space program since its inception, and our current team -- fronted on-camera by Warren Elly -- is by far the most experienced local television crew in the country.
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