![]() ![]() 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. A new Mars rover, called Curiosity, is scheduled to leave in November NASA says it would announce Friday where on the Martian surface Curiosity would try to land.īut for now the one way for Americans to reach orbit will be by hitching seats on Russian Soyuz spacecraft. Eventually, the Obama administration proposes they go explore a passing asteroid, and ultimately land on Mars.Īn ambitious probe to orbit Jupiter is on the launch pad, scheduled for an August launch. NASA's space program is hardly over astronauts will continue to live for months at a time on the International Space Station until at least 2020. More than 15,000 people worked for NASA or its contractors on the shuttle program 8,000 of those jobs will be lost. With Atlantis is safely on the ground today, 2,300 shuttle workers are scheduled to get layoff notices this week. Now, for America's human spaceflight program, comes a period of retrenchment and doubt. Three hundred and thirty-five astronauts have flown on them 14 died when the shuttles Columbia and Challenger were lost.Ītlantis alone made 33 flights, carried 191 space fliers, spent 307 days in orbit, circled Earth 4,848 times and put 125,935,769 miles on its odometer. NASA said before landing that with Atlantis' flight over, the five shuttle orbiters would together have traveled 537,114,016 miles in orbit. ![]() EDT, after a flight of 12 days, 18 hours, 28 minutes and 55 seconds.Īfter 135 flights in 30 years, the space shuttles are now history. "Wheels stop." The ship came to rest at 5:58 a.m. "After serving the world for 30 years, the space shuttle has found its place in history," said Christopher Ferguson, the astronaut who commanded Atlantis' final mission, by radio to mission control. July 21, 2011— - For one last time, the Space Shuttle Atlantis made a long, steep turn, lined up with the runway and landed in the half-light before dawn at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
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