List of Space Shuttle missions

[1] Operational missions launched numerous satellites, conducted science experiments in orbit, and participated in construction and servicing of the International Space Station (ISS).

The cold morning shrunk an O-Ring on the right Solid Rocket Booster causing the external fuel tank to explode.

The highest altitude (apogee) achieved by the shuttle was 386 mi (621 km) when deploying the Hubble Space Telescope.

Four fully operational orbiters were initially built: Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, and Atlantis.

Subsequent to the Apollo 13 mishap, due to Administrator of NASA James M. Beggs's triskaidekaphobia and consequent unwillingness to number a forthcoming flight as STS-13,[7][8][9][10] beginning in 1984, each mission was assigned a code, such as STS-41-B, with the first digit (or pair of digits for years 1990 and beyond) indicating the federal fiscal year offset into the program (so 41-B was scheduled for FY 1984, 51-A thru 51-L originally for FY 1985, and the third flight in FY 1995 would have been named 151-C), the second digit indicating the launch site (1 was Kennedy Space Center and 2 was Space Launch Complex 6 at Vandenberg Air Force Base, although Vandenberg was never used), and the letter indicating scheduling sequence.

This numbering scheme started at 26, with the first flight as STS-26R—the R suffix stood for "reflight" to disambiguate from prior missions.

One initial emergency flight abort (RTLS) sub-orbital test mission was canceled due to high risk.

Many other planned missions were canceled due to the late development of the shuttle, and the Challenger and Columbia disasters.

Instead, NASA planned to effect any required rescues one-by-one, using Russian Soyuz spacecraft.