The space shuttle, icon of US high technology, leading mankind into space age; after 30 years, turns into victim of recession

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Atlantis landing ends 30 years of space shuttle flights
CAPE CANAVERAL - Space shuttle Atlantis touched down before dawn Thursday on Kennedy Space Center's Runway 15, ending 30 years of space shuttle flights.

"Atlantis is home," said NASA's Mission Control moments after its arrival at 5:56 a.m. ET. "Its journey complete. A moment to be savored." In its final act before beginning the long journey home, Atlantis sent a small payload into orbit.

As an era comes to a close, nearly 200 satellites, probes and spacecraft have emerged from the cargo bays of NASA's five space shuttles since the Columbia launched from Florida's Kennedy Space Center on April 12, 1981. "We really wish we could share with everybody this really cool glow," commander Chris Ferguson radioed as he and his crew entered the Earth's atmosphere in a plasma of heated air before touching down. "We're doing fantastic."

The perfect landing is bittersweet. As sorrowful employees greeted the fabulous flying machine for the final time, plans for NASA's next grand venture remain largely on the drawing board. United Space Alliance, one of the space program's largest employers, will lay off about 2,000 employees on Friday.

Kennedy Space Center employees, many waving American flags and sporting space shuttle ties, T-shirts and ribbons, gathered around the shuttle Thursday afternoon after it had been towed from the runway. "You guys are such a special workforce. There is no workforce like this anywhere in the world," Shuttle astronaut Sandy Magnus told the crowd, many who wouldn't have jobs after Friday. "You have to do everything right all the time. You do and you make it look easy."

Most of the nation's Baby Boomers can remember the thrilling moment Apollo 11 astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon, inspiring a generation of kids who idolized astronauts and devoured space science. Generation X grew up on the space shuttle, which astronomer and former NASA historian Steven Dick says provided little in the way of ground-breaking exploration and discovery, but great engineering breakthroughs.

"It's definitely the end of the era," Dick said. "The shuttle has been a magnificent flying machine, an engineering marvel, but it has consigned Americans for two generations to low-Earth orbit. I think that's a negative."

Without the excitement of a heart-pounding launch of astronauts blasting toward the stars, America's space program seems destined for a decade of obscurity. American astronauts will hitch rides to the International Space Station on the Russian Soyuz until commercial space companies develop the rockets and capsules to transport humans. "I hope we won't lose a whole generation. Kids get excited by exploration," Dick said. "I think NASA, in some ways, is doing the right thing by off-loading the routine work of the space shuttle. The only problem is we're a long way from getting something that will take us out of low-Earth orbit."

Until then, NASA is hoping to capture American imagination with telescopes, probes and unmanned spacecraft. "The space shuttle has been the iconic symbol of NASA for the last 30 years," NASA spokesman Allard Beutel said. "We're going to have a different icon. We do aeronautics, climate research, deep space exploration with our telescopes, planetary observations with probes and rovers."

In August, Juno, an unmanned spacecraft, will launch on its five-year cruise to Jupiter. When it arrives in July 2016 it will orbit Jupiter for a year, gathering and transmitting information that will help scientists understand the planet's origin, structure and atmosphere.

In September, NASA will launch the National Polar-orbiting Environmental Satellite System project, which is the first step toward building an Earth-monitoring satellite system. "There is all the space science stuff, which I think is pretty exciting," Dick said. "Everyone loves the images that come in from the Hubble."

At the center of it all is the space shuttle's largest and most ambitious legacy, the International Space Station that took more than a decade and 37 shuttle flights to build. Six astronauts live and work in the 1-million pound orbiting laboratory, keeping watch over dozens of scientific experiments.

"It's magical. I loved living up there and loved working up there," said astronaut Cady Coleman, who spent six months in the space station. "It's amazing to have this outpost, this scientific laboratory the size of a 747, in space."

US space dream halts as Atlantis returns
THE Atlantis space shuttle has made its final landing at Cape Canaveral, ending a 30-year program and possibly US domination of space flight.

Emotions ran high at NASA as the crew of four astronauts returned to Earth after a 12-day mission. Before landing, Atlantis commander Chris Ferguson recalled his memory of Neil Armstrong walking on the moon in 1969, while imparting his thoughts to NASA flight controllers about the shuttle's historic last flight.

"Forty-two years ago today, Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, and I consider myself fortunate that I was there to actually remember the event," Ferguson told mission control. "It is kind of interesting to be here on the final night of the shuttle mission. We don't quite know what to think. We are just trying to take it all in."

After the shuttle rolled to its final stop, the commander and mission control exchanged congratulations and reminiscences about the fleet that "inspired a generation". "America will not stop exploring," said Ferguson.

The job of sending people and goods to the International Space Station orbiting Earth now goes to Russia and private companies. President Barack Obama wants the US to concentrate on deep-space exploration in future, but NASA lacks a firm timetable and dedicated funds to finance the powerful rockets needed.

The shuttle program, which started with the first launch on April 12, 1981, was based on the concept of low-orbit, reusable spacecraft that could carry a maximum of seven astronauts and almost 23,000kg of cargo. NASA built a fleet of five shuttles -- Atlantis, Challenger, Columbia, Discovery and Endeavour -- and yesterday's landing marked 133 successful missions.

Two missions ended in tragedy. In 1986, Challenger exploded 73 seconds after lift-off, killing all seven crew on board, when a flame leak from the solid rocket booster ignited the external fuel tank. Columbia disintegrated during re-entry in 2003, also killing its crew of seven, after a heat-shield tile damaged during lift-off had gone undetected.

NASA improved safety measures after the Columbia disaster but it prompted a decision by the Bush administration to eventually close the program and refocus attention on deep space. After 30 years, all three surviving spacecraft are to be mothballed for exhibition in museums.

The crew chosen for the final flight was commander Ferguson, pilot Doug Hurley and mission specialists Sandy Magnus and Rex Walheim. Before landing, Ferguson read a quote from Gene Kranz, NASA's flight director during the Apollo era, who is best known for saving Apollo 13's astronauts when an oxygen tank exploded during a trip to the moon. "I pray that our nation will someday find the courage to accept the risk and challenges to finish the work that we started," the commander said.

The crew woke yesterday to the song God Bless America and a NASA weather report describing a "gorgeous night at the Kennedy Space Centre". The astronauts said they were anxious to celebrate the landing with the shuttle's ground crew. "We're very excited about seeing those folks... to share the memories of the mission with them and once again just convey how proud we are of them," Hurley said.

End of an era: Last space shuttle comes home
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — The space shuttle passed into history Thursday, the words "wheels stop" crackling over the cockpit radio for the very last time.

In an almost anticlimactic end to the 30-year-old program, Atlantis and its four astronauts glided to a ghostly landing in near-darkness after one last visit to the International Space Station, completing the 135th and final shuttle flight.

It was a moment of both triumph and melancholy. "I saw grown men and grown women crying today — tears of joy to be sure," said launch director Mike Leinbach. "Human emotions came out on the runway today, and you couldn't suppress them."

Now the spaceship and the two other surviving shuttles will become museum pieces, like the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo capsules and the Wright brothers' flying machine before them. NASA astronauts, a dwindling breed, will have to hitch rides to the space station aboard Russian Soyuz capsules for at least three to five years. And thousands more shuttle workers will lose their jobs, beginning with a round of layoffs on Friday.

The spaceship's return was witnessed at the Kennedy Space Center and Houston's Johnson Space Center by a relatively small crowd, mostly of NASA family and friends, compared with the 1 million who watched Atlantis lift off on July 8.

In Houston, flight director Tony Ceccacci, who presided over Atlantis' safe return, choked up while signing off from Mission Control for the final time. "The work done in this room, in this building, will never again be duplicated," he told his team before the doors opened and the center filled with dozens of past and present flight controllers.

Shuttle commander Christopher Ferguson and his crew seized every opportunity to thank the thousands of workers who got them safely to and from orbit and guided them through the 13-day flight. "After serving the world for over 30 years, the space shuttle's earned its place in history. And it's come to a final stop," he radioed after Atlantis touched down just before dawn.

"We copy your wheels stop," Mission Control replied. "Job well done, America."

NASA is getting out of the business of sending cargo and astronauts to the space station, outsourcing the job to private companies.

The first privately operated supply run is expected later this year. But it will be an unmanned flight. It could be several years before private companies fly astronauts to the space station, which is expected to carry on for at least another decade. In the meantime, NASA will rely on the Russians for rides.

The longer-term future for American space exploration is hazy, a huge concern for many at NASA. President Barack Obama has set a goal of sending astronauts to an asteroid by 2025 and Mars in the mid-2030s. But the space agency has yet to even settle on a rocket design.

Thursday, though, belonged to Atlantis and its crew: Ferguson, co-pilot Douglas Hurley, Rex Walheim and Sandra Magnus, who during their mission delivered a year's worth of food and other supplies to the space station and took out the trash. They were greeted with cheers, whistles and shouts by 2,000 people who gathered near the landing strip — astronauts' families and friends, as well as shuttle managers and NASA brass. Ferguson and his crew were later swarmed on the runway by well-wishers.

Bringing the shuttle home in the dark was not exactly a dramatic way to end the program. NASA actually had two landing opportunities Thursday morning — one before daybreak, the other 90 minutes, or one orbit, later, both of them dictated by the day and time of launch and the length of the mission. But NASA always prefers to use the first available landing opportunity because the weather in Florida can deteriorate rapidly. And the space agency had no intention of departing from that practice merely for a better photo op.

As a thank-you to workers - especially those losing their jobs - NASA parked Atlantis outside its hangar for several hours so employees could gather round and say goodbye. Close to 1,000 stood in the midday heat, waving American flags and paper fans and photographing the shuttle.

Angie Buffaloe wept. Three colleagues in her engineering office will lose their jobs Friday. "I spend more time with these guys than I do with my family," said Buffaloe, a 22-year space center worker. "We've been through everything: divorce, sick children, grandchildren. They've been there. We've shared life together ... and now their last day is today."

As of Thursday, the Kennedy Space Center work force numbered 11,500, down from a shuttle-era peak of 18,000 in 1992. Between 1,500 and 1,800 layoffs are coming Friday, and 2,000 more are expected in the coming weeks and months.

"I want them to stick their chests out proudly to say that they were a part of the most incredible era in American spaceflight, in anybody's spaceflight," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden Jr., a former shuttle commander, told reporters on the runway.

The shuttle was NASA's longest-running space exploration program, making its inaugural flight in 1981.

Shuttles launched the Hubble Space Telescope and fixed its blurry vision; built the space station, the world's largest orbiting structure; and opened the final frontier to women, minorities, schoolteachers, even a prince. The first American to orbit the Earth, John Glenn, became the oldest person ever in space, thanks to the shuttle. He was 77 at the time; he turned 90 this week.

Two of the five shuttles - Challenger and Columbia - were destroyed, one at launch, the other during the ride home. Fourteen lives were lost.

Altogether, the shuttle fleet flew 542 million miles, circled Earth 21,152 times, carried 355 people from 16 countries and spent a combined 1,333 days in space — nearly four years.

The decision to retire the shuttle and focus on venturing farther into space was made seven years ago under President George W. Bush.

An American flag that flew on the first shuttle flight and returned to orbit aboard Atlantis was left behind at the space station. The first company to get astronauts there from U.S. soil will claim the flag as a prize.

In the meantime, Atlantis will go on display at the Kennedy Space Center Visitors Complex in 2013. Space shuttle Discovery is headed for a Smithsonian Institution hangar in Virginia. And Endeavour is bound for the California Science Center in Los Angeles.
Said Ferguson: "I want that picture of a young 6-year-old boy looking up at a space shuttle in a museum and saying, `Daddy, I want to do something like that when I grow up.'"

Back to Earth with a bang: 4,000 shuttle staff to lose jobs after final Atlantis mission

The space shuttle - 'magnificent flying machine'

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Images courtesy of Don Emmert Pool / EPA, and BBC