Portable, self-contained power tools were originally developed to help Apollo astronauts drill for moon samples. This technology has lead to development of such tools as the cordless vacuum cleaner, power drill, shrub trimmers, and grass shears.

The official designation for space shuttle orbiter Atlantis is OV-104.

The V-2 rocket, first used in World War II by the Germans and later used by the United States in its early rocketry work, was the first manufactured object to achieve hypersonic flight in February 1949.

NASA stands for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration; there are ten NASA centers nationwide, not including NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C.

INSPIRE stands for Interdisciplinary National Science Project Incorporating Research and Education Experience and is a national program for students in 9th through 12th grade, but that’s nothing new. The INSPIRE program is. In its second year of the Online Community, the INSPIRE OLC currently has over 1800 students.

Atlantis, OV-104, was named after the primary research vessel for the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Massachusetts from 1930 to 1966.

By STS-134 mission designation, Mike Finke was the final first-time flier on the shuttle. The entire STS-135 crew has flown on shuttles before.

Sally Ride became the first American woman in space when she flew aboard Challenger on STS-7, in 1983.

The youngest person to travel in space was Tammy Jernigan, 32, who flew on shuttle Columbia in 1991.

The oldest person to travel in space is John Glenn, 77, who flew on shuttle Discovery’s STS-95 mission in 1998.

Story Musgrave is the only astronaut to have flown on all five shuttles.

Astronauts Jerry Ross and Franklin Chang-Diaz have flown the most shuttle missions with seven each.

355 individual fliers have flown on NASA’s space shuttles.

NASA’s space shuttles have traveled 537,114,016, making 20,952 orbits around the Earth.

For Fiscal Year 2010, the average cost to prepare and launch a shuttle mission was approximately $775 million.

The Johnson Space Center was established in 1963 as the Manned Spacecraft Center.