The main legacy left by the shuttle program is that of a magnificent failure.'īefore flight, Atlantis' commander Ferguson was asked about the prospect of eventually of going to Mars. On June 29, 1995, the American space shuttle Atlantis docks with the Russian space station Mir to form the largest man-made satellite ever to orbit the Earth. NASA's space shuttle fleet began setting records with its first launch on Apand continued to set high marks of achievement and endurance through 30 years of missions. 'What matters is that we strived mightily to do so - and we did strive mightily. 'But there is no embarrassment in setting the bar impossibly high and then failing to clear it,' said former shuttle astronaut Duane Carey in an interview with The Associated Press. The final shuttle mission was completed with the landing of Atlantis on July 21, 2011, closing the 30-year Space. Discovery was the first of the three active Space Shuttles to be retired, completing its final mission on MaEndeavour did so on June 1. Flights have been estimated to cost about half a billion dollars each. The retirement of NASA s Space Shuttle fleet took place from March to July 2011. It was supposed to make spaceflight affordable, safe and routine. It is a quiet ending to a program that, in many eyes, never could live up to the promises made when it was conceived in the early 1970s. Endeavour will be sent to the California Science Center in Los Angeles. Its seniormost sister ship, Discovery, goes to the Smithsonian's Udvar-Hazy Center in Virginia outside Washington. Cleave, a NASA astronaut who joined the space agency after seeing a recruitment flier at a post office, serving on two space shuttle missions in the 1980s and then leading climate. Atlantis will be displayed at the Kennedy Space Center visitors' center. Each has a spacecraft and launcher in the works, though so far, only governments have ever launched people into orbit.Īnd as for the shuttles? The three surviving orbiters now become museum pieces. NASA says that in a few years the job will be taken over by private companies such as SpaceX, Sierra Nevada or Boeing. But for now the one way for Americans to reach orbit will be by hitching seats on Russian Soyuz spacecraft. Space shuttle Atlantis nears touchdown on Runway 33 at the Shuttle Landing Facility at NASAs Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Atlantis space shuttle