Space Shuttle at Kennedy Space Center in the year after the "Columbia" disaster that had taken the life of Indian-American astronaut KC Chawla. On television, the 1996 drama "The Cape" portrays the lives of a group of NASA astronauts as they prepare for and fly Shuttle missions. "Odyssey 5" was a short-lived sci-fi series that features the crew of a Space Shuttle as the last survivors of a disaster that destroys Earth. The 1997–2007 sci-fi series "Stargate SG-1" has a shuttle rescue written into an episode. The 2013 film "Gravity" features the fictional Space Shuttle "Explorer" during STS-157, whose crew are killed
Space Shuttle program Space Shuttle program The Space Shuttle program was the fourth human spaceflight program carried out by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), which accomplished routine transportation for Earth-to-orbit crew and cargo from 1981 to 2011. Its official name, Space Transportation System (STS), was taken from a 1969 plan for a system of reusable spacecraft of which it was the only item funded for development. The Space Shuttle—composed of an orbiter launched with two reusable solid rocket boosters and a disposable external fuel tank—carried up to eight astronauts and up to of payload into low Earth orbit (LEO). When its