Space Shuttle program to the International Space Station (ISS), as the station could be used as a safe haven for the crew awaiting rescue in the event that damage to the orbiter on ascent made it unsafe for re-entry. The board recommended that for the remaining flights, the shuttle always orbit with the station. Prior to STS-114, NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe declared that all future flights of the shuttle would go to the ISS, precluding the possibility of executing the final Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission which had been scheduled before the "Columbia" accident, despite the fact that millions of dollars worth of
Space Shuttle in a September 1969 report of a Space Task Group headed by Vice President Spiro Agnew to President Richard Nixon. Nixon's post-Apollo NASA budgeting withdrew support of all system components except the Shuttle, to which NASA applied the STS name. The vehicle consisted of a spaceplane for orbit and re-entry, fueled from an expendable External Tank containing liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, with two reusable strap-on solid rocket boosters. The first of four orbital test flights occurred in 1981, leading to operational flights beginning in 1982, all launched from the Kennedy Space Center, Florida. The system was retired from service