Tomorrow marks the end of the the 30-year long U.S. Space Shuttle program when Atlantis is scheduled to land at the Shuttle Landing Facility in Merritt Island, Florida. For people of my generation and younger, there there is no memory of any other means of U.S. space transportation. It’s the end of the longest chapter in U.S. manned space exploration.
Here are a few photos from NASA’s Space Shuttle gallery. Go over and check them all out.
This image of the International Space Station was taken by Atlantis' STS-135 crew during a fly around as the shuttle departed the station on Tuesday, July 19, 2011. STS-135 is the final shuttle mission to the orbital laboratory.
This picture of space shuttle Atlantis was photographed from the International Space Station as the orbiting complex and the shuttle performed their relative separation in the early hours of July 19, 2011.
This image is of Atlantis and its Orbital Boom Sensor System robot arm extension backdropped against Earth's horizon and a greenish phenomenon associated with Aurora Australis. One of the station's solar array panels appears at upper left. Because of the exposure time needed for this type of photography, some of the stars in the background are blurred.
Astronaut Ron Garan took this image during the spacewalk conducted on Tues., July 12, 2011. It shows the International Space Station with Space Shuttle Atlantis docked on the right and a Russian Soyuz on the far left.
Space shuttle Atlantis is seen over the Bahamas prior to a perfect docking with the International Space Station at 10:07 a.m. (CDT)
