STS-135 video: Solid rocket booster cameras

It was 1986 and the U.S. Air Force was on the cusp of something unprecedented in human spaceflight — launching a space shuttle crew from California and paving the way for people to fly true polar missions.

The crew of Space Shuttle mission STS 41-B provide an overview of their mission. Challenger launched from the Kennedy Space Center on February 3, 1984, and although the flight was marred by the failure of two commercial satellite deployments, astronaut Bruce McCandless made history by making the first untethered spacewalk using the Manned Maneuvering Unit jet pack.

Atlantis blasted off on May 11, 2009 for the final space shuttle mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope, a dramatic flight that prepared the iconic observatory for a new revolution of discovery