NASA Space Shuttle Atlantis (Retired) - Under Wraps

Since entering its six-story exhibit building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida in November 2012, space shuttle Atlantis has been raised off the ground, shrink-wrapped in 16,000 square feet of plastic and tilted 43 degrees

The tilt is designed to give guests a view of what the shuttle looked like to astronauts aboard the International Space Station. 

CREDIT: collectSPACE.com/Robert Z. Pearlman

With Atlantis shielded from dirt and dust, work is underway to finish walkways and theaters that will lead visitors through the history of the space shuttle program as they tour around Atlantis and more than 60 related exhibits.

Come May 2013, when the shuttle is unwrapped, its payload bay doors will be carefully opened, a replica of its Canadarm robotic arm will be extended and a full-scale model of the Hubble Space Telescope will be installed to span two floors.

Meanwhile outside the facility, the finishing touches are being put on the building's glimmering orange facade that was designed to evoke the space shuttle's re-entry into the atmosphere.

Nearby, the steel skeleton of what will be two towering 185-foot-tall (56 meters) replica solid rocket boosters have begun to rise off the ground.

Visitors will walk between the two rockets — and underneath a massive external fuel tank suspended from them — to enter the exhibit.

Looking forward.

Robotic Refueling: The Jumpstart Push Beyond LEO

On July 12, 2011, spacewalking astronauts Mike Fossum and Ron Garan successfully transferred the Robotic Refueling Mission, or RRM, module from the Atlantis shuttle cargo bay to a temporary platform on the International Space Station's Dextre robot.

Credit: NASA

In mid-January, NASA will take the next step in advancing robotic satellite-servicing technologies as it tests the Robotic Refueling Mission (RRM) aboard the International Space Station.

The investigation may one day substantially impact the many satellites that deliver products Americans rely upon daily, such as weather reports, cell phones and television news.

During five days of operations, controllers from NASA and the Canadian Space Agency will use the space station's remotely operated Special Purpose Dexterous Manipulator (Dextre), robot to simulate robotic refueling in space.

Operating a space-based robotic arm from the ground is a feat on its own, but NASA will do more than just robotics work as controllers remotely snip wires, unscrew caps and transfer simulated fuel.

The team also will demonstrate tools, technologies and techniques that could one day make satellites in space greener, more robust and more capable of delivering essential services to people on Earth.

Fix or Refuel a Satellite?

"Every satellite has a lifespan and eventual retirement date, determined by the reliability of its components and how much fuel it can carry," explains Benjamin Reed, deputy project manager of NASA's Satellite Servicing Capabilities Office (SSCO).

Repairing and refueling satellites already in place, Reed asserts, can be far less expensive than building and launching entirely new spacecraft, potentially saving millions, even billions of dollars and many years of work.

The RRM demonstration specifically tests what it would take to repair and refuel satellites traveling the busy space highway of geosynchronous Earth orbit, or GEO.

Located about 22,000 miles above Earth, this orbital path is home to more than 400 satellites, many of which beam communications, television and weather data to customers worldwide.

By developing robotic capabilities to repair and refuel GEO satellites, NASA hopes to add precious years of functional life to satellites and expand options for operators who face unexpected emergencies, tougher economic demands and aging fleets.

NASA also hopes that these new technologies will help boost the commercial satellite-servicing industry that is rapidly gaining momentum.

NASA Sguttle Atlantis (retired)

Shuttle Atlantis is moved from its processing hangar to the VAB & is being prepared for public display next year.

Credit: Nasa

Manned version of X-37 space plane

When the Space Shuttle Atlantis touched down for the final time on July 21, 2011, it looked as if the notion of a manned spacecraft capable of going into orbit and then landing like a conventional airplane had been abandoned.

The US government appears to be in favour of returning to Apollo-style space capsules with anything like the Shuttles being relegated to the private sector.

Arthur Grantz, chief engineer of Space and Intelligence Systems' Experimental Systems Group at Boeing, delivered a paper at American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics' (AIAA) Space 2011 conference indicating that the U.S. Air Force and Boeing are already on the way toward developing a manned Shuttle replacement based on the X-37B robot space plane.

X-37B
The X-37B is one of the US Air Force's most highly visible yet most secret projects of recent years.

A robot spacecraft that looks like a miniature space shuttle without a flight deck was bound to attract public attention, but its mission has remained hidden under the blanket word "classified."

The government has released some information about the X-37B. In part, it's an experimental test bed based on the Boeing X-40 lifting body.

With an overall length of a little under 30 ft (9 m) and a wing span just under 15 ft (4.5 m), it's small enough to fit easily into the Shuttle's cargo bay, but it's still capable of acting like a robot version of the larger, older spacecraft.

Launched on top of an Atlas booster at Vandenberg Air Force Base, it can carry payloads into space, return them to earth and then land like a conventional aircraft. The difference is that it doesn't require a pilot or ground control because it can land by itself.

It also has much more endurance than the old Shuttle. While the Shuttle never remained in orbit for as long as three weeks, the X-37B has already broken the record for a reusable spacecraft in orbit: 244 days.

It's rated to remain on station for 270 days if needed.

NASA Shuttle Endeavour and Atlantis Engines: Powering the Future SLS

All six Pratt Whitney Rocketdyne space shuttle main engines from Endeavour's STS-134 and Atlantis' STS-135 missions sit in test cells inside the Engine Shop at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. 

For the first time, all 15 shuttle main engines are in the shop at the same time, being prepped for shipment to NASA's Stennis Space Center in Mississippi, where they are being 'repurposed' for use on NASA's next generation heavy lift rocket, the Space Launch System.

Photo credit: NASA/Dimitri Gerondidakis

NASA's Last Space Shuttle Crew Takes Manhattan This Week

The final space shuttle crew, the astronauts of STS-135, stand with shuttle Atlantis after its landing July 21 at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. CREDIT: NASA

Move over Muppets, the astronauts are coming to town. NASA's final space shuttle crew will visit the Big Apple this week for a series of public events to share their experiences of flying on the last-ever flight of the 30-year shuttle era.

Commander Chris Ferguson, pilot Doug Hurley and mission specialists Sandra Magnus and Rex Walheim launched July 8 on NASA's 135th and final space shuttle flight, a delivery mission to the International Space Station to stock up the outpost with spare parts.

The spaceflyers landed July 21, ending the STS-135 mission and NASA's 30-year space shuttle program.

ISS with the Moon above and the Earth below

This picture of the International Space Station was photographed from the space shuttle Atlantis as the orbiting complex and the shuttle performed their relative separation in the early hours of July 19, 2011.

Onboard the station were Russian cosmonauts Andrey Borisenko, Expedition 28 commander; Sergei Volkov and Alexander Samokutyaev, both flight engineers; Japan Aerospace Exploration astronaut Satoshi Furukawa, and NASA astronauts Mike Fossum and Ron Garan, all flight engineers.

Onboard the shuttle were NASA astronauts Chris Ferguson, STS-135 commander; Doug Hurley, pilot; and Sandy Magnus and Rex Walheim, both mission specialists. Photo credit: NASA

NASA Shuttle Atlantis crew waves good-bye to the ship

The space shuttle Atlantis crew waves good-bye to the ship July 21, 2011 at Kennedy Space Center in Florida after it landed several hours earlier, ending its 13-day mission and final flight for the space shuttle program.

Photo courtesy AFP.

Clearly visible is the scrotched underside of Shuttle Atlantis which endured tremendous heat generated by re0entry and protected the crew as it rode the wave of plasma back to Earth.

We can only imagine the smell of scotched metal and ceramics that fills the air around the shuttle craft and leaves a lasting memory of another safe landing in the hearts and minds of the crew and the ground staff.

NASA Shuttle: The End of an Era of Achievement and Awe

Workers measured and marked in bright red the letters "MLG" at the spot where space shuttle Atlantis' main landing gear came to rest after the vehicle's final return from space.

Securing the space shuttle fleet's place in history on the STS-135 mission, Atlantis safely and successfully rounded out NASA's Space Shuttle Program on the Shuttle Landing Facility's Runway 15 at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Main gear touchdown was at 5:57:00 a.m. EDT, followed by nose gear touchdown at 5:57:20 a.m., and wheelstop at 5:57:54 a.m. On the 37th shuttle mission to the International Space Station, STS-135 delivered more than 9,400 pounds of spare parts, equipment and supplies in the Raffaello multi-purpose logistics module that will sustain station operations for the next year.

STS-135 was the 33rd and final flight for Atlantis, which has spent 307 days in space, orbited Earth 4,848 times and traveled 125,935,769 miles.

Image Credit: NASA/Kyle Herring

Shuttle Atlantis Carried Adult Stem Cells Into Space

On its 135th and final flight in NASA's shuttle program, the shuttle Atlantis carried the stem cells of six adults to the International Space Station. Alberto Sant Antonio, MD, a Weston, Florida general surgeon, was selected to obtain the tissue samples from the six adults.

NASA is hopeful the Human adult stem cell experiments will lead to the reversal of the rapid aging process that zero gravity has on astronauts.

"The stem cell research being conducted now will benefit all of us in the future," said Dr. Sant Antonio. "I am confident that NASA's stem cell experiments will help astronauts stay younger and healthier in space, and this will eventually apply to people here on earth.

Dr. Sant Antonio has for the past two years submitted specimens for NASA's evaluation. Not until the final shuttle mission did the adult stem cells end up in space. "NASA came through in a huge way," said Dr. Sant Antonio. "Astronauts age much more quickly because of harmful gamma rays that bombard their bodies. Injecting future astronauts may slow the aging process in space. This is a critical step in space exploration. This is history in the making."

Read More: Atlantis Carries Adult Stem Cells Into Space

NASA - Station Crew Views Shuttle Atlantis Final Landing

This unprecedented view of the space shuttle Atlantis, appearing like a bean sprout against clouds and city lights, on its way home, was photographed by the Expedition 28 crew of the International Space Station.

Airglow over Earth can be seen in the background.

Image Credit: NASA

NASA Shuttle Atlantis: final landing marks end of an era

Space Shuttle Atlantis landed at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida for the last time and ended the 30-year-long Space Shuttle era on 21 July 2011.

This was 135th flight and the 25th night landing of NASA's Space Shuttle Program. Main gear touchdown was at 11:56:58 CEST.

Credits: NASA TV

NASA Shuttle Atlantis: Undocked and heading home

The crew of the Shuttle Atlantis say a fond farewell to the commander and crew of the ISS.

The US shuttle Atlantis has undocked from the space station and is heading home to Earth one last time.

When the orbiter lands early on Thursday morning in Florida, it will bring to a close Nasa's 30-year re-usable spaceplane programme.
The shuttle undocked on schedule at 0628 GMT.

Atlantis is now heading for a point about 200m (600ft) from the station. It will fly around it to photograph the 400-tonne structure.

"Farewell ISS, make us proud," said Atlantis commander Chris Ferguson after the undocking.
Shuttles have routinely carried out the inspection procedure, but this one will be slightly different.

Onboard Russian computers are commanding the ISS to swing around 90 degrees. This means Atlantis will get a different perspective on the ISS as it loops over the outpost, getting a good look along the station's truss, or backbone, and at the ends of some of the modules.

The imagery will help engineers on the ground understand better how the materials that make up the ISS are coping in the harsh environment of space.

The Atlantis crew of four presented the station crew of six with two leaving presents before climbing aboard the orbiter and closing the hatch.

One was a model of the shuttle - a reminder of the pivotal role the vehicle has played in building the station. The other was a small American flag flown on the very first space shuttle mission in 1981.

This flag will be claimed by the first US commercial company to fly an astronaut vehicle to the ISS. Chris Ferguson, the Atlantis commander, said: "The flag represents not just a symbol of national pride and honour, but in this particular case it represents a goal."

"We're closing a chapter in the history of our nation," added astronaut Ronald Garan.

The first private companies to transport crew to and from the station are not expected to begin operations for at least three years.

Earlier on Monday, the 6.5m-long (21ft) Raffaello logistics module brought up by Atlantis and attached temporarily to the station was returned to the shuttle's payload bay. Raffaello was used to deliver some four tonnes of supplies to the ISS, including over a tonne of food.

The cylinder has been packed with about 2.5 tonnes of unneeded materials from the station that will be brought back to Earth.

The Southern Lights seen from the ISS. In the foreground (left to right) are a station solar wing, a robotic boom and the docked Atlantis

NASA Shuttle Mission STS-135: Atlantis docked with ISS, seen from Earth

Shuttle Atlantis Crew Leave Historic Flag on ISS

Shuttle Atlantis astronauts brought with them a historic U.S. flag that flew aboard shuttle Columbia on first shuttle flight, STS-1 in 1981, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration said on Saturday.

"Commander Chris Ferguson will present it to the station crew as a symbol that the United States is in space to stay, with astronauts permanently living and working aboard the station for many years to come," NASA said.

Ferguson said the flag will remain at the station until the next crew launched from the United States arrives at the outpost.

That crew will bring the flag back to Earth, until it once again is carried into space with the first crew to launch from the United States on a journey of exploration beyond Earth orbit.

NASA Shuttle ISS: What Kind of World Do You Want?

NASA Shuttle Atlantis Computers: Navigate Record of Reliability

The space shuttle's five general purpose computers computers, or GPCs, are slow and have little memory compared to modern home computers. On the other hand, no one straps the latest-and-greatest desktop computer inside a machine that vibrates like an old truck on a washboard road while requiring it to get a spacecraft into orbit and back safely.

In other words, when it comes to flying the shuttle, reliability means far more than performance.

"The environment of space is very harsh and unfriendly and not just space, but getting into space," said Roscoe Ferguson, a space shuttle flight software operating system engineer for the United Space Alliance.

"Something like a desktop might not even survive all the vibration. Then once you get into space you have the radiation."

Even after a major computer upgrade in 1991, the primary flight system has a storage capacity of one megabyte and runs at a speed of 1.4 million instructions per second. While this was more memory and much faster computing speed than could be achieved with the original 1970s-era Shuttle flight computers, it doesn't compare to today's desktop computers.

"The GPCs serve as the brains of the space shuttle," Ferguson said. "It’s really the heart of the control system."

The GPCs include 24 input/output links that collect the signals from the shuttle's myriad sensors and sends them to the GPCs. The computers plug the readings from the sensors into elaborate mathematical algorithms to determine when to swivel the three main engines during launch, how much to move the elevons on the wings for landing and which thrusters to fire in space to set up a rendezvous with the International Space Station, for example. That process is completed about 25 times every second.

The shuttle's computer-driven flight control system was a first for a production spacecraft. The fly-by-wire design, tested on modified research aircraft, does not have any mechanical links from the pilot to the control surfaces and thrusters. Instead, the pilot moves the control stick in the cockpit and the computers transmit signals to the control mechanisms to make them move.

The shuttle system is so dependent on computers that a fraction of a second without them could be catastrophic during the critical parts of flight.

"We have a range where if you can't control the vehicle for 120 milliseconds, you could lose the vehicle," said Andrew Klausman, the United Space Alliance technical manager for the backup flight system and multifunction electronic display subsystem. He's been working with the shuttle computers since 1986.

That's why engineers put so much time into testing and improving the system. A software change typically goes through about nine months of in-house simulator testing and then another six months of testing in a unique NASA lab before it is accepted for flight. The results of the strenuous testing regimen? Well, it has been 24 years since the last time a software problem required an on-orbit fix during a mission. In the last 12 years, only three software errors have appeared during a flight. But perhaps the most meaningful statistic is that a software error has never endangered the crew, shuttle or a mission's success.

"The current quality of this software system is really almost unimaginable," said USA's Jim Orr, who has been working with the shuttle's computer systems and software in different positions since 1978. "It's that good."

The networked computers are set up so that four are operational and one is a backup that could fly the launch and entry if the others failed. The computers receive their information from a host of sensors and actuators throughout the orbiter, external fuel tank and solid rocket boosters.

It sounds like a lot of work for any electronic device, let alone ones that are running on far less memory than a cell phone. And keep in mind that the first few dozen shuttle missions used the first-generation GPCs, which boasted memory capacities of 416 kilobytes and were a third as fast. They also weighed twice as much and it took two boxes to do the job of one of today's GPCs.

That's where the software comes in.

NASA Shuttle Atlantis Crew: Computer glitch wakes crew

After getting a little free time, the Atlantis space shuttle crew was woken up to deal with a second computer failure.

The astronauts switched to another of the shuttle's five main computers, and Nasa said the shuttle was in "stable condition with no concerns for the crew's safety".

A computer had also failed on Sunday.

The crew had gone to bed late on Thursday afternoon, but Mission Control woke them up about one and a half hours later because of the computer trouble. Nasa said they would troubleshoot the problem.

Sunday's computer failure occurred just before the shuttle linked up with the International Space Station. Engineers said the problem was likely caused by a bad switch throw. That computer was working again after new software was installed.

The check-and-balance network of computers provides redundancy during the most critical phases of the mission, and will be needed when Atlantis lands next week to wrap up the 30-year shuttle era.

Earlier on Thursday, the crew got some time off after a hectic week to savour their historic experience.

Until Thursday, the workload in orbit was so intense that the four astronauts had only fleeting moments of realising "wow, this is really it", astronaut Rex Walheim said in a series of TV interviews.

Atlantis first rocketed into orbit in 1985. This is its 33rd flight and the 135th shuttle mission overall. Atlantis will join Discovery and Endeavour in retirement, following its landing next week.

NASA Shuttle Discovery Mothballed

Discovery rolled into the VAB this morning to make room for the return of Shuttle Atlantis next week.

NASA Shuttle Atlantis: Era’s Final ISS EVA

Spacewalker Ron Garan rides on the International Space Station's robotic arm as he transfers a failed pump module to the cargo bay of space shuttle Atlantis. 

Garan and fellow Expedition 28 astronaut Mike Fossum wrapped up a six-hour, 31-minute spacewalk Tuesday afternoon, performing upgrades and maintenance on the orbiting outpost.

It's the final scheduled spacewalk during a NASA Shuttle mission.

Image Credit: NASA

The Astronauts bounced between the International Space Station and the payload bay of the shuttle Atlantis during a demanding July 12 spacewalk in which they exchanged a failed thermal control system coolant pump from the orbiting science laboratory for a robotic satellite refueling demonstrator.


Though the astronauts got off to a late start at 9:22 a.m. EDT, the two men drew on their experience gained over three station assembly spacewalks in 2008 to recover. Atlantis astronaut Rex Walheim choreographed the 6-hr. 31-min. excursion.

The balky pump’s retrieval was a high priority for the Atlantis crew, who docked at the space station July 10, two days after lifting off on the STS-135 supply mission, NASA’s final shuttle flight.

The device that circulates ammonia coolant through the station’s outstretched starboard radiators failed prematurely on July 31, 2010.

The shutdown prompted a dramatic power down of the station, from which station managers recovered with a series of hastily planned spacewalks over three weeks.

 The source of the pump loss, an internal short circuit, remains unexplained. Once the hardware is back on Earth, it will undergo a failure analysis that could lead to a design change for circulation hardware.

Next, the spacewalkers hauled the boxy refueling demonstrator from the orbiter to Dextre, the two-armed Canadian robot secured to the station’s exterior. The demonstrator, developed by the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and the Canadian Space Agency, is tentatively scheduled for trials later this year.

In other activities, the spacewalkers activated the Optical Reflector Materials Experiment that was placed on the station’s starboard solar power truss in May. The collection of optical material samples is scheduled to be retrieved next year to evaluate how well they weathered vacuum, solar radiation and the effects of atomic oxygen. Each sample is a candidate for future spacecraft fabrication.