Space Shuttle Enterprise

Space Shuttle Enterprise, designated OV-101, was the first Space Shuttle orbiter built, but it was a test vehicle and was never equipped for spaceflight. Rolled out of Rockwell's Palmdale, California assembly facility on 17 September 1976, it was originally to be named Constitution until a write-in campaign by viewers of the television series Star Trek urged the White House to rename it. In 1977 it flew the approach and landing test program at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Facility at Edwards Air Force Base, carried on a 747 shuttle carrier aircraft and then released for five free flights crewed by astronauts Fred Haise, Gordon Fullerton, Joe Engle and Dick Truly. Plans to refit it for space flight were dropped. It later served as a pathfinder at launch facilities and a test vehicle for brakes and parachute systems, and on 18 November 1985 it became the property of the Smithsonian Institution as a museum piece.