International Space Station program out of 28 flights have not been to the ISS, and only the planned Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission in 2009 will not be ISS-related out of 13 planned missions until the end of the Space Shuttle program in 2010). The Space Shuttle was retired from service upon the conclusion of Atlantis' final flight on July 21, 2011. NASA was reliant even at the time on some of the resupply contracts being fielded out to Soyuz and Progress and the other unmanned tugs, but it had launched a few years earlier into a program of aggressive development of commercial US
Space Shuttle orbiter Space Shuttle orbiter The Space Shuttle orbiter was the spaceplane component of the Space Shuttle, a partially reusable orbital spacecraft system that was part of the Space Shuttle program. Operated by NASA, the U.S. space agency, this vehicle could carry astronauts and payloads into low Earth orbit, perform in-space operations, then re-enter the atmosphere and land as a glider, returning its crew and any on-board payload to the Earth. Six orbiters were built for flight: "Enterprise", "Columbia", "Challenger", "Discovery", "Atlantis", and "Endeavour". All were built in Palmdale, California, by the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-based Rockwell International company. The first orbiter, "Enterprise", made