Space Shuttle orbiter
reusable spacecraft component of the Space Shuttle system
The Space Shuttle orbiter was the spaceplane component of the Space Shuttle, a partially reusable orbital spacecraft system that was part of the discontinued Space Shuttle program. Operated from 1981 to 2011 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's North American Aircraft Operations branch. The first orbiter, Enterprise, made its maiden flight in 1977. An unpowered glider, it was carried by a modified Boeing 747 airliner called the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft and released for a series of atmospheric test flights and landings. Enterprise was partially disassembled and retired after completion of critical testing. The remaining orbiters were fully operational spacecraft, and were launched vertically as part of the Space Shuttle stack.
Columbia was the first space-worthy orbiter; it made its inaugural flight in 1981. Challenger, Discovery, and Atlantis followed in 1983, 1984, and 1985, respectively.
The public source identifies “Space Shuttle orbiter” as reusable spacecraft component of the Space Shuttle system. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Space, Shuttle and orbiter.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1064394. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1981, 2011, 1977 and 1983.
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This entry incorporates text from “Space Shuttle orbiter” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.