Atlantis brings down final curtain on high frontier

Published on Thursday 21 July 2011 16:29

IT WAS a tranquil ending for such a momentous occasion. Nasa's space shuttle Atlantis glided silently back to Earth at the conclusion of its last mission yesterday, an understated finale to a 30-year era of human space flight punctuated by many extraordinary highs and two disasters.

The orbiter and its crew of four astronauts touched down at 5:57am local time on a remote airstrip at the north end of Florida's Kennedy Space Centre, watched by several hundred Nasa workers and journalists who turned up in the pre-dawn darkness to witness a moment of history.

The milestone came 42 years and a day after the crew of Apollo 11 set foot on the Moon.

It was a far cry from Atlantis's launch 13 days ago, when up to a million people packed the beaches and roads of Florida's Space Coast to watch her ascent.

However, the significance and emotion of her arrival after a five million-mile journey, the 135th of the shuttle age, ran just as strongly. Crew members and mission managers spoke of the successes of the programme - despite the Challenger and Columbia tragedies that cost 14 astronauts their lives - and hordes of Nasa workers and their families clutching Stars and Stripes showed up later in the day to walk Atlantis back to her hangar.

"There were a lot of human emotions out there on the runway," said Mike Leinbach, Nasa's launch director. "I saw grown men and grown women crying."

Chris Ferguson, Atlantis's last commander, paid tribute to her and the other retired orbiters, which between them have flown 542 million miles since the launch of Columbia in April 1981.

"The space shuttle has changed the way we view the world and it's changed the way we view our universe," he said shortly after landing.

"There are a lot of emotions today, but one thing's indisputable, America's not going to stop exploring. Thank you Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Endeavour and our ship, Atlantis. Thank you for protecting us and bringing this programme to such a fitting end.

"We are, all four of us, honoured to be a part of this but ultimately it's everyone who's worked on the shuttle programme. Although we got to take the ride, we sure hope that everybody who has ever worked on, or touched or looked at or envied or admired the space shuttle was able to take just a little bit of the journey with us." In Houston, Texas, flight director Tony Ceccacci thanked his team for a flawless flight.

"The shuttle gave us a moment in history books … the work done in this room and this building will never be duplicated," he said.

"Hold your heads up high with pride as we close out the space shuttle programme. You have earned it. Savour the moment, suck it in and know you are the best, the best in the world."Nasa administrator Major Charlie Bolden, a former shuttle commander, had tears in his eyes as he spoke to workers within hours of the landing, promising to take Nasa into a new era of exploration.

"We've made 30 years of incredible history," he said. "Now I want to send American astronauts where we've never been before."

In a statement released to commemorate the last shuttle landing, Major Bolden was also keen to look ahead.

"This final shuttle flight marks the end of an era, but today, we recommit ourselves to continuing human spaceflight and taking the necessary and difficult steps to ensure America's leadership in human spaceflight for years to come."

The world's first reusable spaceship achieved several crowning glories during its lengthy lifespan, particularly the launch of, and audacious in-orbit repairs to, the Hubble space telescope and the construction of the $100 billion international space station (ISS), built almost exclusively by American astronauts.

Now the shuttles have retired, and Atlantis has left almost a year's worth of supplies at the ISS, future servicing missions to the orbiting outpost will have to be made by Russia's fleet of Soyuz spacecraft.

Nasa will also have to hitch rides to the space station with the Russians, paying them up to $63 million for each astronaut it wants to send.

Private companies, including SpaceX, Lockheed and Sierra Nevada, have won Nasa contracts to develop spacecraft to compete for such lower Earth orbit duties and hope to be flying humans to the ISS by 2015.

Nasa, meanwhile, is charged with designing, but not yet building, a heavy-lift rocket that might eventually take astronauts back to the moon for the first time since 1972, and perhaps on to Mars.

Meanwhile, Nasa's retired shuttles are to go on public display. Atlantis, which travelled almost 126 million miles in its 33 flights since its launch in October 1985, will be relocated to the Kennedy visitor centre after engineers spend several months stripping it of all traces of fuel and other toxic contaminates.

Endeavour, which completed its final flight on June 1, is heading for the California Science Museum in Los Angeles, and Discovery, last flown in March, will be placed in the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC.

Enterprise, the non-orbiting test vehicle at the Smithsonian, will move to New York.

Nasa's two other shuttles, Challenger and Columbia, were both destroyed in flight. Challenger exploded 73 seconds after take off in January 1986, with blame falling on a faulty booster rocket O-ring.

Columbia blew apart on re-entry to Earth's atmosphere in February 2003 when hot gases entered a hole in the wing caused by falling foam insulation at take-off.

Mr Leinbach remembered the sacrifices made by the crews and paid tribute to the employees who worked on the programme. Almost 10,000 have been made redundant now the shuttle programme has ended.

"There's a lot of sadness that it's over, and it's hard to say goodbye to so many people who have over the years become family," he said. "But the sun will rise again tomorrow."

RISING SO HIGH

THE first fully-functional space shuttle was the Columbia, built in Palmdale, California. It blasted off from the Kennedy Space Centre on April 12, 1981, with a crew of two – Commander John Young, below, and pilot Robert Crippen, bottom.

The early 1980s were the shuttle's glory days, with a series of successful missions.

However, disaster struck on January 28, 1986, when Challenger disintegrated 73 seconds after launch, killing all seven astronauts on board.

Then, in 2003, Columbia disintegrated during re-entry to the Earth's atmosphere. It emerged that damage had been done with a suitcase-sized chunk of insulating foam was torn off during take-off.

The Columbia disaster changed space travel. The shuttle became a vehicle for serving the space station. The crew of the Atlantis signed off a 30-year history of space travel yesterday by delivering a year's supplies to the station's crew.