The Cold War and the Space Race were going on…

After the completion of the Apollo program in the US, NASA initiates the project aimed at the creation of reusable space vehicles. Its main goal was the delivery of large payloads to near-Earth orbit and, as a consequence, creation of an inhabited base on the Moon, and manned trips to Mars with further disembarkment of the crew to its surface.

Space Shuttles were launched to space with the use of a pair of Solid Rocket Boosters and a large external tank for main engines. The largest crew of the space shuttle consisted of eight astronauts. Usual flights of these spacecraft lasted from five to sixteen days.

The USSR was strongly concerned about the development of the Space Shuttle program as it was searching for a hidden military threat. One of its main considerations was the possibility for Shuttle to carry nuclear arms and capture the satellite Salyut 7 on the Earth’s orbit.

In total, the US designed five Shuttles (two of which were destroyed in disasters) and one prototype. The flights to space were carried on from April 12, 1981, to June 21, 2011. During the thirty-year period of the maintenance of Space Shuttles, there were 135 launches.