The Space Shuttle program was the fourth human spaceflight program carried out by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration, which accomplished routine transportation for Earth-to-orbit crew and cargo from 1981 to 2011.

Why did the space shuttle program end?

"The bottom line answer is that it was too expensive. Way too expensive," former NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory system engineer Mark Adler wrote in 2015. "The shuttle never met its promise for low-cost access to space by virtue of the system's reusability."

When did us stop space shuttle program?

More than 30 years later, when Space Shuttle Atlantis rolled to a stop on the runway July 21, 2011, the shuttle program officially came to a close. After the end of shuttle era, American astronauts were forced to pay for rides aboard Russian rockets — a situation many found galling. But that's not the case anymore.