Shuttle program ends July 21, 2011

William Atkins
Wednesday, 20 July 2011 22:52

Science - Space

The last flight of the U.S. space shuttle program will land at the Kennedy Space Center on Thursday, July 21, 2011, ending the thirty-year manned space program of NASA.

The space shuttle Atlantis and its STS-135 crew are scheduled to land at 5:56 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time (EDT), with a secondary attempt at 7:32 a.m. EDT. Other attempts are possible on Friday, if weather does not permit a landing on Thursday.

The 37th trip to the International Space Station by the space shuttle fleet, and the 135th overall mission of the Space Transportation System (STS) program will hit the history books when Atlantis touches down on its runway in Florida.

According to the NASA article 'NASA's Space Shuttle Scheduled to Return to Earth for Final Time Thursday,' after its landing 'Atlantis will be towed from the runway and parked outside Orbiter Processing Facility-2 (OPF-2) for several hours to give employees an opportunity to walk around and photograph the shuttle.'

Following the landing, special events and a news briefing will be held to commemorate the end of the U.S. manned space shuttle program.

NASA administrator will talk, as will Chris Ferguson, the commander of the last shuttle mission. Later, all of the STS-135 astronauts will participate in a question-and-answer session.

All of these events will be shown live on NASA Television and on the Web at NASA TV.

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