On October 3, 1985, the Space Shuttle Atlantis made its maiden flight. Atlantis is America’s fourth operational space shuttle. The contract to build the shuttle was awarded on January 29, 1979, to Rockwell International. Construction on the shuttle began the following year, on March 3. Following the tradition of naming space shuttles after historic ships, Atlantis was named after a two-masted boat that had been the main research vessel of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Massachusetts between 1930 and 1966. Because three other shuttles had been built before Atlantis, its creators were able to apply that knowledge to complete its construction in about half the time. Once it was completed, Atlantis weighed about 151,315 pounds, which was about 3.5 tons lighter than Columbia.