Shuttle Atlantis had mythic impact on space programme (News Feature)

By Anne K Walters May 15, 2010, 4:03 GMT

Washington - Atlantis is no myth.

The shuttle Atlantis may be about to enter retirement, but unlike the mythic island of the same name, the orbiter leaves a tangible legacy - reaching across the space race and back to the origins of the universe.

For now, officials at the US space agency NASA say they are focussed on the current mission, not looking back, but admit that - in quiet moments - it hits them that this is likely the end of a storied spacecraft.

In its final scheduled flight, Atlantis is carrying a Russian research module known as Rassvet, or Dawn, to the International Space Station. The shuttle programme has played a key role in building the truly international station, with parts from the US, Russia, Europe, Canada and Japan.

Atlantis itself helped open that international cooperation after decades of competition in the space race between the US and the former Soviet Union.

In 1995, Atlantis was the first shuttle to dock with Russia's Mir space station, a gesture just a few years after the fall of the Iron Curtain that signalled how far relations and space cooperation had come.

For five days and 100 hours, a joint US-Russian crew conducted health experiments in space and resupplied the space station. It was the first time that a shuttle would ferry astronauts back to Earth after an extended mission in space, bringing home three Russian cosmonauts after more than 100 days in space.

Atlantis played role in several ground-breaking developments in astronomy over recent decades, launching the Galileo probe to Jupiter and the Magellan probe to Venus in 1989.

Galileo's nearly 14-year mission discovered a possible ocean on one of Jupiter's moons, observed volcanic activity on another moon, conducted the first fly-by of an asteroid and discovered the first asteroid known to have a moon.

Magellan conducted a five-year mission to Venus, where it conducted detailed mapping of the planet's surface.

Atlantis would later conduct the final servicing mission of the Hubble Space Telescope last year, in which a series of marathon spacewalks were made to repair the telescope. Hubble had been set for the junk heap until Atlantis' repair mission, which installd new instruments and repaired existing ones to extend the telescope's life until at least 2014, and possibly beyond.

Construction on Atlantis began 30 years ago. The shuttle arrived at Kennedy Space Centre in 1985 and conducted its first flight on October 3 of that year.

Atlantis was the fourth shuttle designed to travel to space, and by the time it was built, NASA had lessened the weight of the craft and shortened the time needed to make it.

Proposed under former president Richard Nixon as a series of reusable craft to take astronauts regularly and cheaply into space, the shuttle never operated as regularly, or as cheaply, as envisioned. Each flight costs some 450 million dollars, and months of revamping are required after each flight to make the shuttle space worthy again.

Safety has been a continuing concern, with the deaths of 14 astronauts in two accidents on other shuttles. For that reason, and the age of the craft, NASA had first considered retiring Atlantis years ago, but decided to keep it in commission until the entire fleet could be retired after completion of the ISS.

Each remaining shuttle has one flight left - though Atlantis has the potential to make history once again after this flight. NASA will outfit it for a potential rescue mission in case something goes wrong with the very last scheduled shuttle flight.

Alternatively, it could be revived in the unlikely event another mission is added to the manifest.

'There's a lot of hope that we get another flight, but there's also a lot of realism,' launch director Mike Leinbach said. 'The Atlantis team loves that ship and loves what they do, so of course they hope there's going to be another flight.'

After the shuttle programme ends later this year, NASA will rely on Russian Soyuz craft to ferry astronauts to the ISS until a commercial flight programme can be developed under an Obama administration revamping of the space programme.

President Barack Obama moved to scrap Bush-era return-to-moon plans that officials say are designed to allow NASA to focus on longer-term goals, such as a trip to Mars by the mid 2030s.