space shuttle

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun A reusable spacecraft with wings for controlled descent in the atmosphere, designed to transport astronauts between Earth and an orbiting space station and also used to deploy and retrieve satellites.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• noun a reusable vehicle that can carry people or objects into orbit around the earth and return to be used again for subsequent trips; -- distinguished from rockets that are used only once. The present (1997) American space shuttle is a manned vehicle, having an external fuel tank that is expendable and not re-used.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• noun Any vehicle capable of travelling repeatedly between the Earth's surface and outer space carrying people or cargo.
• noun Any vehicle capable of repeatedly travelling between destinations in outer space carrying people or cargo.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• noun a reusable spacecraft with wings for a controlled descent through the Earth's atmosphere