Atlantis makes last journey home; space shuttle era ends

By Anne K Walters Jul 21, 2011, 12:09 GMT

Washington - The Atlantis returned to Earth Thursday, marking the end of the space shuttle era when its wheels touched down for the last time at the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida.

The shuttle's parachute slowed it to a stop on an illuminated runway at 5:57 am (0957 GMT), as thousands of NASA employees and guests gathered at the space centre and at mission control in Houston to witness the historic moment.

They were greeted by a sonic boom as Atlantis flew overhead.

'Having fired the imagination of a generation, its place in history secured, Atlantis pulls into port for the last time. Its voyage is at an end,' mission control said as the shuttle pulled to a stop.

'After serving the world for over 30 years, the space shuttle has earned its place in history,' Atlantis commander Chris Ferguson replied.

The craft had changed the way humans view their world and the universe, he said as he acknowledged each shuttle - including the Challenger and Columbia, which were lost in accidents that killed 14 astronauts.

Ferguson was the last astronaut to exit the shuttle, following his crew members Doug Hurley, Sandy Magnus and Rex Walheim.

They were greeted with hugs from NASA officials and ground crew, who took their time to savour seeing Atlantis on the landing strip. NASA administrator Charles Bolden praised the crew as the 'final four,' and told reporters they worked 'like racehorses' throughout their mission.

The landing was a particularly bittersweet moment for NASA engineers and technicians, many of whom have worked on the shuttle for decades. Thousands of lay-offs have already begun within the space agency and the contracting firms that do much of the maintenance work on the shuttle. Many more workers will have their last day this week.

This was Atlantis' final flight for NASA's 30-year-old fleet of reusable spacecraft before the programme is retired. It was the 135th shuttle mission and saw Atlantis fly more than 8 million kilometres.

The shuttle programme began its long-career in the 1970s as a successor to the Apollo moon craft and was designed to be the first reusable spacecraft.

The maiden flight in April 1981 by astronauts John Young and Robert Crippen aboard Columbia formally ushered in the new era with a two-day, six-hour mission and 36 orbits of Earth.

Since then, shuttles have flown more than 800 million kilometres - more than the distance between Earth and Jupiter - and brought more than 350 people into orbit, launched crucial satellites, ushered in a new era of cooperation in space and built the International Space Station (ISS).

Atlantis and its four crew members brought more than 4 metric tons of cargo and spare parts to outfit the ISS for a year during their 13-day final mission. The shuttle is the only spacecraft big enough to haul such heavy loads, though Russian, European and Japanese craft can still fly smaller, lighter cargo to the station.

The delivery put the ISS in a good position to move forward. 'Now we have the chance to see if space can really be that research facility that we need,' said Bill Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for space operations.

Atlantis and the other remaining orbiters - Discovery, Endeavour and the test vehicle Enterprise - will be outfitted for display in museums. Atlantis will be displayed at the Kennedy Space Centre's museum.

With the shuttle's retirement, US and international astronauts will be reliant on Russian Soyuz spacecraft for rides to the space station. Commercial companies have begun work under NASA supervision to build the next generation of spacecraft to bring cargo and astronauts into low-Earth orbit, but it will be several years before they are ready to take people aloft. NASA officials are shooting for the first human flights sometime in 2015 or 2016.

Amid tight budgetary constraints, President Barack Obama killed plans by his predecessor George W Bush to build a spacecraft to return to the moon. Instead he wants the space agency to focus on building a rocket that can take astronauts into deeper space and turn over much of the routine work of ferrying astronauts into low-Earth orbit to commercial firms.

Those plans have come under harsh criticism for not providing a clear enough goal and leaving the US without a government-owned spacecraft for years.

But NASA officials insisted that the Atlantis landing did not mark the end of US involvement in space.

'I want to send American astronauts where we've never been before by focusing our resources on exploration and innovation, while leveraging private sector support to take Americans to the International Space Station in low Earth orbit,' Bolden said in a statement released shortly after landing.

'Children who dream of being astronauts today may not fly on the space shuttle . . . but, one day, they may walk on Mars.'