The renowned space shuttle Atlantis on Friday successfully launched for the last time and is currently cruising in the direction of the International Space Station for a 12-day mission which will bring NASA’s 30-year shuttle program to a shut down.
When Atlantis comes back to Earth in approximately two weeks, NASA will stop working its shuttle program in order to pay attention to deep-space exploration. Trips to the ISS will switch to a commercial focus, and also the orbiters from Columbia, Discovery, Endeavour, and Atlantis will probably be shipped off to various galleries and museums through the entire country.
The shuttle period started on April 12, 1981 with Columbia. It had been manned by Commander John W. Young and Pilot Robert L. Crippen and made it through two days. The second flight, likewise aboard Columbia, took place in November 1981 and then there were two dozen successful shuttle launches before the tragic Challenger explosion in 1986. Following the tragedy, the particular shuttle program needed a two-year break just before coming back with an all-veteran crew for the September 29, 1988 launch of Breakthrough.
The December 1998 STS-88 mission by way of shuttle Endeavour started out construction on the ISS; the very first crew arrived at the station in 2000.
In most, the five orbiters – Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour – have flown a lot more than one hundred thirty instances as well as carried over 350 individuals directly into space. These people traveled more than half a billion miles, which NASA stated is much more than enough to reach Jupiter.
“Designed to return to Earth and land like a giant glider, the shuttle was the world’s first reusable space vehicle,” NASA stated. “More than all of that, though, the shuttle program expanded the limits of human achievement and broadened our understanding of our world.”
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