The first phase was designated as the "taxi-test" phase, which involved the SCA and orbiter in a mated formation conducting taxi tests at Edwards Air Force Base to verify the taxiing characteristics of the aircraft while carrying the orbiter. The ALT program was divided into three distinct phases. In addition to the two assigned Shuttle crews, who would alternate crewing the orbiter, a single flight crew was attached to the Boeing 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft (SCA) for the entire program: Truly flew his second Shuttle mission as commander of STS-8. He flew his second Shuttle mission on STS-51-I. Engle was originally a USAF pilot on the X-15, and had already gained Astronaut wings by the time he joined NASA. Fullerton later flew as the pilot of STS-3 and commanded STS-51-F. Haise had previously flown as the Lunar Module pilot of Apollo 13, and was named as the commander of the original STS-2 mission. The program lasted from February until October 1977, with a pair of two-man crews assigned to the orbiter: In January 1977, Enterprise was taken by road from the Rockwell plant at Palmdale, California to the Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base to begin the flight test phase of the program, which had been christened by NASA as the Approach and Landing Tests (ALT). These tests would encompass not only the flight tests planned to test the flight characteristics of the orbiter, but also ground-based testing of the launch pad systems and procedures. Upon the orbiter's entry into service, NASA began an extensive program of tests using Enterprise to ensure all of the systems it had put in place for the Shuttle program functioned as designed. It was unveiled to the public on September 17, 1976, with several members of the Star Trek cast in attendance. Originally planned to be named Constitution (due to its completion being in the year of the United States Bicentennial), a letter-writing campaign by Star Trek fans persuaded President Gerald Ford to change the name of the prototype to Enterprise. The contract to build the spaceplane, which eventually came to be known as the "orbiter", was awarded to North American Rockwell (later Rockwell International), with the first complete orbiter rolled out in 1976. The final agreed design would feature a reusable spaceplane, a disposable external tank and reusable solid-fuel rocket boosters. The Space Shuttle program originated in the late 1960s as an attempt to reduce the cost of spaceflight by introducing a reusable spacecraft.
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