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| The space shuttle Atlantis is shown on launch pad 39A after the Rotating Service Structure was rolled back at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, July 7, 2011. Launch of Atlantis is scheduled for July 8 with a crew of four aboard the final STS-135 mission of the space shuttle program. (Xinhua/Reuters Photo) |
WASHINGTON, July 8 (Xinhua) -- Space shuttle Atlantis will take off Friday on NASA's 135th and final shuttle flight. Its scheduled return to the earth later this month will mark the end of NASA's 30-year space shuttle program.
Atlantis, known inside the space agency as Orbiter Vehicle-104, or OV-104, was the fourth space shuttle orbiter to join the fleet at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Construction of Atlantis began on March 30, 1980. It rolled out of the assembly plant in Palmdale, California, in March 1985 and carried out its first mission on Oct. 3, 1985.
Atlantis is named after the two-masted boat that served as the primary research vessel for the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Massachusetts from 1930 to 1966. The boat had a 17-member crew and accommodated up to five scientists, who worked in two onboard laboratories, examining water samples and marine life.
Atlantis also served as the in-orbit launch site for many noteworthy spacecraft, including planetary probes Magellan and Galileo, as well as the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory.
Starting in June 1995, Atlantis pioneered the Shuttle-Mir missions, flying the first seven missions to dock with the Russian space station. When linked, Atlantis and Mir together formed the largest spacecraft in orbit at the time.
Atlantis' missions also included the delivery of the Destiny Laboratory to the space station in February 2001; the first launch with a camera mounted to the external tank, which captured the shuttle's ascent to orbit in October 2002; and the final servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope in May 2009.
Following are statistics on Atlantis prior to its final mission.
Total miles traveled: 120,650,907 (194 million km)
Total time in space: 293 days, 18 hours, 29 minutes, 37 seconds
Total orbits: 4,648
Total flights: 32
Total crew members: 203
Mir dockings: 7
International Space Station dockings: 11
Satellites deployed: 14.
