STS-135 was the 33rd and final flight for Atlantis, which has spent 307 days in space, orbited Earth 4,848 times and traveled 125,935,769 miles. On the 37th shuttle mission to the International Space Station, STS-135 delivered more than 9,400 pounds of spare parts, equipment and supplies in the Raffaello multi-purpose logistics module that will sustain station operations for the next year. Onboard are NASA astronauts Chris Ferguson, STS-135 commander Doug Hurley, pilot Sandy Magnus and Rex Walheim, both mission specialists. (EDT) on July 21, 2011, followed by nose gear touchdown at 5:57:20 a.m., and wheelstop at 5:57:54 a.m. Securing the space shuttle fleet’s place in history, Atlantis marked the 26th nighttime landing of NASA’s Space Shuttle Program and the 78th landing at Kennedy. With the likes of SpaceX yet to send a freighter to the ISS, NASA was hedging its bets somewhat with STS-135, weighing the risks of one more Shuttle mission to top up the stores against the chance of delays in the Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) programme.Īs it transpired, the first SpaceX Dragon to berth with the ISS would take place over a year later, in October 2012.Ribbons of steam and smoke trail space shuttle Atlantis as it nears touchdown on the Shuttle Landing Facility’s Runway 15 at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida for the final time. The Raffaello Multi Purpose Logistics Module (MPLM) was used, carrying approximately 2,600kg of gear to the station. Former NASA astronaut and Shuttle boss weigh in on fixing Hubble Space TelescopeĪs for the mission itself, its primary goal was to deliver cargo to the ISS.Jeff Bezos names the fourth person for the first New Shepard flight: Wally Funk.Richard Branson plans to trump Jeff Bezos by 9 days in billionaires' space race.The black screen of BIOS borkage haunts Space Shuttle Discovery's new home.Astronauts Sandra Magnus and Rex Walheim have yet to fly in space again and both retired from NASA in the years that followed the mission. Making a second spaceflight was Doug Hurley, who later flew on SpaceX's Crew Dragon Demo-2 mission with Bob Behnken. The crew of Shuttle veterans was commanded by Christopher Ferguson, who would go on to be assigned to the first test flight of Boeing's CST-100 Starliner capsule, before stepping down in 2020. A reauthorisation bill added the mission to the manifest, and NASA announced that it would proceed with the launch at the start of 2011. The Space Shuttle programme was supposed to have ended with STS-134. By the time of STS-135, however, the programme had reached the end of the road.Īs well as the lack of a rescue Shuttle, STS-135 was also notable due to the funding shenanigans associated with it. Since the loss of Columbia in 2003, Launch On Need (LON) missions (numbered STS-3xx) were on standby in the event of a vehicle being deemed unable to attempt a successful re-entry. As such the plan was to have the crew remain aboard the International Space Station (ISS) and be returned to Earth via Soyuz over the next year. No flight hardware was immediately available to mount a rescue of STS-135 should anything have gone awry. Last launch of Space Shuttle Atlantis (Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls)
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