Space Shuttle Atlantis: A Legacy of Service and Reliability

With 25 years of service that has expanded human knowledge, advanced exploration and contributed to missions that will impress a legacy upon future generations, Space Shuttle Atlantis lifted off for its 32nd mission, scheduled to be its final flight.

STS-132 launched at 2:20 p.m. EDT May 14 and landed at 8:48 a.m. EDT May 26 at Kennedy Space Center. With landing comes the culmination of Atlantis’ career with the vehicle’s 11th and final scheduled visit to the International Space Station (ISS).

Atlantis and its six-member crew flew a 12-day mission delivering an integrated Cargo Carrier and Russian-built Mini-Research Module to the ISS. Crewmembers conducted three spacewalks to stage spare components outside the Station, including six batteries, a boom assembly for the Ku-band antenna and spares for the Canadian Dextre robotic arm extension. A radiator, airlock and European robotic arm for the Russian Multipurpose Laboratory Module were also payloads on the flight.

“Atlantis is in the best shape it has ever been,” said Ray Propst, USA Flow Manager. “The work we’ve done has made the Orbiter better than ever.”

Atlantis, or OV-104, is NASA’s fourth space-rated Space Shuttle and bears the name of the two-masted ship that served as the primary research vessel for the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute from 1930 to 1966.

Construction began on Atlantis in March 1980, and, because it was built by the same teams that had the experience and lessons learned from constructing Enterprise, Columbia and Challenger, Space Shuttle Atlantis was completed in about half the time in labor-hours spent on its sister vehicles. Following nearly five years of work, Atlantis arrived at Kennedy Space Center April 9, 1985.

Just six months later, on the morning of October 3, Atlantis roared off the launch pad making its inaugural voyage to space. The mission, STS-51J, was a classified flight with a Department of Defense (DoD) payload. Atlantis went on to deliver four more DoD payloads during its career, and, like its seafaring predecessor, the vehicle has carried the spirit of exploration on a variety of important missions.

Among its milestones, several of Atlantis’ flights advanced planetary exploration with the deployment of probes designed to better understand objects in the solar system.

In December 1989, Atlantis’ fourth mission, STS-30, saw the deployment of the Magellan Venus-exploration spacecraft into low Earth orbit, the first U.S. planetary science mission launched since 1978 and the first planetary probe to be deployed from the Shuttle. Magellan reached its Venus destination in August 1990 and entered a near-polar elliptical orbit. During its four years of activity around Venus, scientists used Magellan to conduct three mapping cycles that provided mapping coverage of 98 percent of the planet.

Less than six months later, Atlantis launched on the STS-34 mission to deploy the Galileo planetary exploration spacecraft destined for Jupiter. The probe entered orbit around Jupiter in December 1995 and started its primary 23-month, 11-orbit tour of the Jovian system. An extension of the mission enabled additional encounters of all four of Jupiter’s major moons. The mission found evidence of subsurface liquid layers of saltwater on Europa, Ganymede and Callisto and documented unexpected levels of volcanic activity on Io. Galileo also became the first spacecraft to fly by an asteroid and was the only direct observer as fragments from the Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet slammed into Jupiter in 1994.

In 1991, Atlantis flew the STS-37 mission that deployed the second of NASA’s “Great Observatories,” the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory. Dedicated to observing the high-energy universe, Compton carried a collection of four instruments that together could detect gamma rays. The observatory’s scientific agenda included studies of solar flares, gamma-ray bursts, pulsars, supernova explosions and black holes.

Space Shuttle Atlantis also symbolizes progress made on Earth with international cooperation and human ingenuity as the vehicle helped pioneer Shuttle-Mir missions, flying the first seven flights to dock with the Russian station. The Shuttle-Mir program contributed to the ISS by fostering international cooperation, integration of U.S. and Russian hardware, risk reduction-mitigation in operations and early initiation of science and technology research.

The STS-71 mission in 1995 was the first of the Space Shuttle-Mir linkups and also marked a number of historic firsts, including the 100th U.S. human space launch conducted from the Cape and the first on-orbit changeout of a Shuttle crew.

Atlantis flew the subsequent six Shuttle-Mir missions, STS-74, 76, 79, 81, 84 and 86 from 1995 to 1997. The flights accomplished a variety of milestones, including the transfer of veteran astronaut Shannon Lucid, who set what was then the record for the longest duration stay in space by an American at 188 days. When linked, Atlantis and Mir together formed the largest spacecraft in orbit at the time.

Less than three years after its final flight to Mir, Atlantis’ duties shifted to support the construction of the ISS. Its first mission to the orbiting outpost, STS-101 in May 2000, delivered supplies and reboosted the Station’s orbit. Atlantis was also the first vehicle to fly with the newly upgraded “glass cockpit” that improved crew/Orbiter interaction with easy-to-read graphic portrayals of key flight indicators, like attitude, altitude and speed, and provided greater backup capabilities.

Throughout its other missions to the Station, Atlantis has delivered several vital components to the ISS, including the U.S. laboratory module, Destiny, which serves as the primary operating facility for U.S. research payloads.

Astronauts work inside the pressurized facility to conduct research in medicine, engineering, biotechnology, physics, materials science and Earth science. On subsequent missions, Atlantis also carried the Joint Airlock Quest and multiple sections of the Integrated Truss structure that makes up the Station’s backbone.

“The United States laboratory, called Destiny … is really the guts of the Space Station’s research and command and control capabilities,” said astronaut Tom Jones, an STS-98 crewmember on the mission that delivered the U.S. science facility to the ISS. “It becomes possible to do science and to make … quality science because of the arrival of the lab.”

More recently, in May 2009, Atlantis served an exceptional mission when it carried a crew of seven to the Hubble Space Telescope for the fourth servicing mission, STS-125. The mission was a success, with the crew completing five spacewalks to install new cameras, batteries, a gyroscope and other components to upgrade the telescope. The work accomplished is expected to extend Hubble’s life into 2014.

“The vehicles shine when they do things like the Hubble repair missions,” said Propst. “That type of mission exploits the full array of capabilities that an Orbiter possesses.”

Among the fleet of Orbiters, Atlantis holds some impressive records for between-flight processing.

Atlantis has conducted a subsequent mission in the shortest time after the previous mission when it launched in November 1985 on STS-61-B, only 50 days after its previous mission, STS-51J. Even more recently, Atlantis broke another record when during the STS-129 postflight interview in November 2009, Shuttle Launch Director Mike Leinbach said that Atlantis officially beat Shuttle Discovery on the record low amount of Interim Problem Reports, with a total of just 54 listed since returning from the STS-125 mission earlier that year.

Although each Orbiter looks similar and is designed to meet the same standards of performance, those who prepare them for flight say each is distinctive.

“They have their own unique personality,” said Xavier Houle, a Thermal Protection System engineer in USA Vehicle Operations who has spent the better part of the past decade working on Atlantis. “Atlantis has always taken good care of us and the astronauts.”

The astronauts come away from their experience with equal awe of the Shuttles.

“It’s truly an amazing vehicle,” said Charlie Hobaugh, Commander of the STS-129 mission. “It was really a remarkable thing, and you just stand in awe.”

At the conclusion of the STS-132 mission, Atlantis has spent some 294 days in space, logged more than 120 million miles, completed more than 4,600 Earth orbits and transported 189 astronauts.

“Atlantis – what a great orbiter,” said Howard DeCastro, USA Vice President and Shuttle Program Manager. “It has been solid on every mission. I couldn’t be more proud of the team of folks who contributed to its safe operation and exceptional accomplishments through the years. The team has worked with great care, meticulously and diligently to ensure Atlantis has been ready for its missions. Atlantis has truly proven to be a magnificent flying machine.”

Read more from this issue

Go to Previous Company Newsletters

Terms & Conditions
Privacy Statement
Site Map
Home

©2010 United Space Alliance, LLC.
All rights reserved.