NASA / Kenny Allen
A decade ago today, the orbiter Atlantis safely touched down on the Shuttle Landing Facility's Runway 15 at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida—successfully completing flight STS-135, and bringing the space shuttle program to a triumphant end. With the International Space Station (ISS) fully stocked for the next twelve months thanks to supplies brought to the orbital outpost via the Raffaello Multi-Purpose Logistics Module, the main STS-135 payload, Atlantis returned home after a mission that concluded the shuttle's 13-year involvement with the ISS program. Russia's Soyuz capsule was the only crewed vehicle to visit the station for the next nine years, but the shuttle program left behind an enduring legacy which would be continued when SpaceX's Crew Dragon Endeavour lifted off for the outpost in May of last year. And the shuttle's imprint can once again be felt inside Kennedy Space Center's Vehicle Assembly Building...with the Space Launch System undergoing stacking operations (for Artemis 1) that once took place on the shuttle and Apollo Saturn V rockets before it.
It is refreshing to know that as one chapter in NASA's human spaceflight history ended, a new one is finally unfolding in its place. Ad astra.
NASA / Glenn Benson
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