A remarkable view of Atlantis captured by astronauts on the space station. The shuttle’s plasma trail appears as a bean sprout against clouds and city lights
Bringing a glorious and highly successful era to an end, NASA's space shuttle Atlantis on Thursday touched down at Kennedy Space Center's Runway 15, after completing its 13-day long final space mission.
It was the 25th night landing, the 78th landing at Kennedy and the 133rd landing in shuttle history.
Atlantis' main gear touched down at 5:57 a.m. (EDT) followed by the nose gear at 5:57:20 and wheels stop at 5:57:54 a.m. At wheels stop, the mission elapsed time was 12 days, 18 hours, 28 minutes and 50 seconds, according to a NASA press statement.
"After serving the world for over 30 years, the space shuttle has earned its place in history. It’s come to a final stop," said Atlantis commander Chris Ferguson.
The STS-135 (Shuttle Atlantis) crew consisted of Commander Chris Ferguson, Pilot Doug Hurley, Mission Specialists Sandra Magnus and Rex Walheim. They delivered more than 9,400 pounds of spare parts, spare equipment and other supplies in the Raffaello multi-purpose logistics module - including 2,677 pounds of food - that will sustain space station operations for the next year. The 21-foot long, 15-foot diameter Raffaello brought back nearly 5,700 pounds of unneeded materials from the station, the release added.
STS-135 was the 33rd and final flight for Atlantis, which spent 307 days in space, orbited Earth 4,848 times and traveled 125,935,769 miles.
It was the 25th night landing, the 78th landing at Kennedy and the 133rd landing in shuttle history.
Atlantis' main gear touched down at 5:57 a.m. (EDT) followed by the nose gear at 5:57:20 and wheels stop at 5:57:54 a.m. At wheels stop, the mission elapsed time was 12 days, 18 hours, 28 minutes and 50 seconds, according to a NASA press statement.
"After serving the world for over 30 years, the space shuttle has earned its place in history. It’s come to a final stop," said Atlantis commander Chris Ferguson.
The STS-135 (Shuttle Atlantis) crew consisted of Commander Chris Ferguson, Pilot Doug Hurley, Mission Specialists Sandra Magnus and Rex Walheim. They delivered more than 9,400 pounds of spare parts, spare equipment and other supplies in the Raffaello multi-purpose logistics module - including 2,677 pounds of food - that will sustain space station operations for the next year. The 21-foot long, 15-foot diameter Raffaello brought back nearly 5,700 pounds of unneeded materials from the station, the release added.
STS-135 was the 33rd and final flight for Atlantis, which spent 307 days in space, orbited Earth 4,848 times and traveled 125,935,769 miles.
Despite the dark skies over Florida's Space Coast, large crowds came out to try to glimpse Atlantis as it made its historic return from orbit. Two thousand people were gathered at Kennedy's landing strip itself, but even in at the Johnson Space Center in Texas, where mission control is sited, they came in huge numbers.
The de-orbit track brought Atlantis across central Florida and the Titusville-Mims area before a hard bank to the left put the vehicle on a line to Runway 15 at Kennedy.
The return of Atlantis marked a moment of high emotion for the Space Coast - not least because it will trigger a big lay-off of contractor staff. More than 3,000 people involved in shuttle operations lose their jobs this week.
Mindful of this, Nasa Administrator and former astronaut Charles Bolden was quick to thank programme staff in the speeches that followed the landing.
"I want everybody who was involved in this to feel incredibly proud of what you did and what your role was," he said.
"Like me, [the crew of Atlantis] got to do the flying but we owe an incredible debt of gratitude to the thousands, literally tens of thousands, of folks all around the country who made all this possible."
The orbiter programme does not officially end for a month, but even then it is likely to take a couple of years to close all activities, such as the archiving of decades of shuttle engineering data.
For Atlantis, its retirement will be spent as a static display at the Kennedy visitor complex.
Nasa hopes to invest money saved from shuttle operations in a new spaceship and rocket that can take humans beyond the ISS to destinations such as the Moon, asteroids and Mars.
The conical ship, known as Orion, has already been defined and is in an advanced stage of development. The rocket, on the other hand, is still an unknown quantity.
