The spectators inside KSC, and the hundreds of thousands more people outside the centre, did not see the orbiter's climb for long. Within a minute she had disappeared through a bank of cloud for the chase out over the Atlantic and a rendezvous with the International Space Station ISS on Sunday.
The ship and her crew will spend seven days docked at the orbiting platform. Mission goals include the delivery of a huge load of food for the ISS residents and a robotics facility that will test strategies for re-fuelling satellites high above the planet. There has been much talk here in the past few days about the end of an era and the consequences it will have for the Kennedy workforce, many of whom will lose their jobs. Nasa has attempted to shift the debate to what comes next and the strategy it has adopted to replace the expensive orbiter programme.
His agency believes a more affordable approach to getting astronauts to the ISS can be achieved by contracting out their transport to private companies. One of those prospective commercial concerns, Boeing, has been displaying a model at KSC of a capsule it says could lift up to seven individuals to the station.
SNC is producing a mini-shuttle it calls the Dream Chaser, which, again, could carry up to seven astronauts into low-Earth orbit. But none of the commercial replacements for shuttle are likely to be ready for service for at least three years.
Nasa itself hopes to invest in a new spaceship and rocket that can take humans beyond the space station to destinations such as the Moon, asteroids and Mars. The conical ship, known as Orion, has already been defined and is in an advanced stage of development.
The rocket, on the other hand, is still an unknown quantity. The US Congress has told the agency what its minimum capabilities should be. However, the agency is currently struggling to put those specifications into a concept it says can be built to the timeline and budget specified by the politicians.
It promises to detail the rocket's baseline design before the summer is out. Critics have bemoaned the lack of speed in moving to new systems, a delay that means America must rely on Russian rockets to launch its astronauts for the foreseeable future.
STS lifted off on June 27, , to usher in several historic moments. The flight was the first shuttle mission to head to the Mir space station. When some of the crew swapped places to head back home, Atlantis also became the first shuttle to see its astronaut manifest change in space. Also, the mission marked the th human spaceflight launch from Kennedy Space Center. Atlantis and Mir, when hooked together, formed the largest spacecraft orbiting Earth, at the time.
The space station and space shuttle together weighed about tons, or almost half a million pounds. While on board, the joint U. The shuttle flew again to the station in November on mission STS Among the astronauts on board was Chris Hadfield, the first and only Canadian to make it to the Mir space station. Atlantis also returned American Jerry Linenger to Earth after he had a challenging stay aboard Mir, which included a fire aboard the station as well as the need to do ongoing repairs on the aging facility.
The fire, NASA later wrote, " altered the whole nature of his mission " and prompted a safety investigation by the agency. Missions to Mir continued through , but Atlantis was taken off the roster for about three years to do some upgrades.
The orbiter had two upgrades done before , which included improving the plumbing and electricity for extended stays in space, putting in an airlock for the International Space Station, and upgrading Atlantis to a "glass cockpit" that included more advanced electronics.
Atlantis leapt into station work once again when it returned to flight on STS The orbiter blasted off for the station on May 19, , and became the third mission to do work there. Astronauts transferred more than a ton of supplies and did spacewalks to work on two cranes outside of the station. In the next three years, Atlantis crews hooked up cables between the Zarya and Zvedza modules, installed the U.
In , shuttle flights went on hiatus again after the Columbia shuttle broke up during re-entry. Atlantis flew again on STS, which had the most unique delay of the shuttle program.
When an updated weather forecast came in showing that Cape Canaveral was in no danger, NASA brought the shuttle back to the pad while it was still on the road to the VAB. This was the only time a shuttle reversed course like this.
In its last few missions to the station, Atlantis continued hauling heavy equipment such as the Columbus science laboratory and some truss segments. It flew the very last shuttle mission , STS, touching down safely on July 21, On that mission, Atlantis brought the Raffaello multipurpose logistics module into space, as well as a bunch of spare parts.
Appropriately for the workhorse of the shuttle fleet, Atlantis remains in the city where so many shuttle workers helped prepare her for flights into space. The shuttle is displayed at the Kennedy Space Center. In April , a black thermal tile , which had not flown in space, was apparently stolen. A NASA volunteer noticed it had disappeared from a display cart after she gave a demonstration at the exhibit.
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Elizabeth Howell is a contributing writer for Space. She is the author or co-author of several books on space exploration. Elizabeth holds a Ph.
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