Atlantis lights up sky as shuttle era winds down (News Feature)

By Anne K Walters Nov 17, 2009, 1:38 GMT

Cape Canaveral, Florida - It has been a familiar but spectacular sight along the central Florida coast for nearly 30 years - a space shuttle roaring into outer space, blasting off a cloud of steam and a plume of fiery rocket fuel.

Soon, that sight will be no more.

Atlantis, which launched Monday for a resupply mission to the International Space Station, marks the start of the last six missions for the ageing shuttle fleet. It is to make way for a new spacecraft, Orion, designed to return astronauts to the moon and possibly even Mars and beyond.

The current mission is part of the US space agency NASA's efforts to stock up the ISS reserves as the shuttle programme enters its planned final year in 2010.

The shuttle sent billows of steam across the scrub and brush around the central Florida launchpad, trailing flames as it shot off into the clouds. The blast shook the ground and sent a roar over the thousands of spectators who applauded the successful launch, the 129th shuttle flight since 1981.

'With the number of missions to go, it's starting to hit home,' shuttle launch director Mike Leinbach said.

Atlantis will fly just one more time, and the other two shuttles have just two flights each before the retirement deadline at the end of 2010.

Atlantis is to dock Wednesday with the space station, which orbits 350 kilometres above Earth. As the first of several flights devoted largely to delivering spare parts, this mission is laden with the highest-priority items.

The shuttle will deliver two platforms with 12,360 kilogrammes of spare parts, which will be installed on the outside of the station. It is also bringing replacement parts for a urine recycling system that has frequently malfunctioned and been supplied with new parts since being installed a year ago.

Questions are swirling around the space flight programme, as the Obama administration weighs an independent report on the future of manned space flight, which found an investment of 3 billion dollars a year would be needed to be feasibly accomplish the goal of returning to the moon.

In the meantime, it was business as usual at the Kennedy Space Centre, where NASA officials insist they must remained focussed on the task at hand - safely returning astronauts to and from orbit and completing the ISS.

On Monday, engineers were intently focussed on Atlantis' launch, while media poured in from around the world to train their cameras on the craft nearly 5 kilometres away that shook the earth and roared to life through the clouds.

The Atlantis astronauts will conduct three six-hour spacewalks to transfer spare parts and prepare for the installation of new modules.

The flight is the last time the shuttle will be used to take an ISS crew member back to Earth. US astronaut Nicole Stott has been living aboard the ISS for three months.