Rolled out on September 17, 1976, it was built for NASA as part of the Space Shuttle program to perform atmospheric test flights after being launched from a modified Boeing 747.

[1] However, during the construction of Space Shuttle Columbia, details of the final design changed, making it simpler and less costly to build Challenger around a body frame that had been built as a test article.

A large number of subsystems—ranging from main engines to radar equipment—were not installed on Enterprise, but the capacity to add them in the future was retained, as NASA originally intended to refit the orbiter for spaceflight at the conclusion of its testing.

Fans of Star Trek asked US President Gerald Ford, through a letter-writing campaign, to name the orbiter after the television show's fictional starship, USS Enterprise.

In an official memo, White House advisors cited "hundreds of thousands of letters" from Trekkies, "one of the most dedicated constituencies in the country", as a reason for giving the shuttle the name.

[1][17] These tests included a maiden "flight" on February 18, 1977, atop a Boeing 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft (SCA) to measure structural loads and ground handling and braking characteristics of the mated system.

This meant that retrofitting the prototype would have been a much more expensive process than previously realized, involving the dismantling of the orbiter and the return of various structural sections to subcontractors across the country.

Between November 1984 and May 1985, Enterprise was again mated with an external tank and solid rocket boosters in a boilerplate configuration for a series of fit checks of the never-used shuttle facilities at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

[23][24][25] On November 18, 1985, Enterprise was ferried to Washington, D.C., where it became property of the Smithsonian Institution and was stored in the National Air and Space Museum's hangar at Dulles International Airport.

Refitting the shuttle with all of the necessary equipment for it to be used in space was considered, but NASA decided to use spare parts constructed at the same time as Discovery and Atlantis to build Endeavour.

They removed a section of fiberglass leading edge from Enterprise's wing to perform analysis of the material and attached it to the test structure, then shot a foam block at it.

[26] While the leading edge was not broken as a result of the test, which took place on May 29, 2003, the impact was enough to permanently deform a seal and leave a thin gap 22 in (56 cm) long.

[30][31] On July 7, using a leading edge from Atlantis and focused on panel 8 with refined parameters stemming from the Columbia accident investigation, a second test created a ragged hole approximately 16 by 16 in (41 by 41 cm) in the RCC structure.

On April 17, 2012, Discovery was transported by Shuttle Carrier Aircraft to Dulles from Kennedy Space Center, where it made several passes over the Washington D.C. metro area.

[35][36] After Discovery had been removed from the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft, both orbiters were displayed nose-to-nose outside the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center before Enterprise was made ready for its flight to New York.

[42][43] The mobile Mate-Demate Device and cranes were transported from Dulles to the ramp at JFK and the shuttle was removed from the SCA overnight on May 12, 2012, placed on a specially designed flat bed trailer and returned to Hangar 12.

[46] Enterprise went on public display on July 19, 2012, at the Intrepid Museum's new Space Shuttle Pavilion, a temporary shelter consisting of a pressurized, air-supported fabric bubble constructed on the aft end of the carrier's flight deck.

[51] Enterprise was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on March 13, 2013, reference number 13000071, in recognition of its role in the development of the Space Shuttle Program.