Beginning in 1995 with STS-71, Atlantis made seven straight flights to the former Russian space station Mir as part of the Shuttle-Mir Program. ĭuring STS-37 in 1991, Atlantis deployed the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory.
STS-27 was only the second mission after the Challenger Disaster and a single mission gap between fatal incidents would almost certainly end any political support in the US Congress for the Shuttle Program.
Had Atlantis been lost during STS-27, it is highly unlikely that the program would continue. A similar situation would eventually lead to the loss of the shuttle Columbia in 2003, albeit on the more critical Reinforced Carbon-Carbon. The survival of the crew is attributed to a steel L-Band antenna plate which was positioned directly under the missing tile. Upon landing, Atlantis became the single most damaged shuttle to successfully land. Mission Control deemed the damage to be "Lights and Shadows" and instructed the crew to proceed with the mission as usual, infuriating many of the crew. Due to the classified nature of the mission, the only images transferred to Mission Control were encrypted and of extremely poor quality. The crew were instructed to use the Remote Manipulator System to survey the condition of the underside of the right wing, ultimately finding substantial tile damage. Ītlantis docked to the International Space Station during STS-132 missionĭuring the launch of STS-27 in 1988, debris from the right solid rocket booster struck the underside of the vehicle, severely damaging over 700 tiles and removing one tile altogether. With STS-30 Atlantis became the first Space Shuttle to launch an interplanetary probe. Two of these, both flown in 1989, deployed the planetary probes Magellan to Venus (on STS-30) and Galileo to Jupiter (on STS-34). Atlantis was then used for ten flights between 19. Among the five Space Shuttles flown into space, Atlantis conducted a subsequent mission in the shortest time after the previous mission (turnaround time) when it launched in November 1985 on STS-61-B, only 50 days after its previous mission, STS-51-J in October 1985. It flew one other mission, STS-61-B, the second night launch in the shuttle program, before the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster temporarily grounded the Shuttle fleet in 1986. Space Shuttle Atlantis lifted off on its maiden voyage on 3 October 1985, on mission STS-51-J, the second dedicated Department of Defense flight. When it rolled out of the Palmdale assembly plant, weighing 151,315 lb (68,635 kg), Atlantis was nearly 3.5 short tons (3.2 t) lighter than Columbia.Atlantis was completed in about half the time it took to build Space Shuttle Columbia.Weight (with three shuttle main engines): 151,315 pounds (69 t).Space Shuttle Atlantis as it transits the Sun Overland transport from Palmdale to Edwards Air Force Base Wings arrive at Palmdale, California, from Grumman Start structural assembly of aft-fuselage 8.1 Composite overwrapped pressure vesselsĬontract Award to Rockwell International's Space Transportation Systems Division.Atlantis landed for the final time at the Kennedy Space Center on 21 July 2011.īy the end of its final mission, Atlantis had orbited the Earth a total of 4,848 times, traveling nearly 126,000,000 mi (203,000,000 km) or more than 525 times the distance from the Earth to the Moon.Ītlantis is named after RV Atlantis, a two-masted sailing ship that operated as the primary research vessel for the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution from 1930 to 1966. STS-135 took advantage of the processing for the STS-335 Launch on Need mission that would have been necessary if STS-134's crew became stranded in orbit. STS-134 by Endeavour was expected to be the final flight before STS-135 was authorized in October 2010. Its maiden flight was STS-51-J from 3 to 7 October 1985.Ītlantis embarked on its 33rd and final mission, also the final mission of a space shuttle, STS-135, on 8 July 2011. Manufactured by the Rockwell International company in Southern California and delivered to the Kennedy Space Center in Eastern Florida in April 1985, Atlantis is the fourth operational and the second-to-last Space Shuttle built. Space Shuttle Atlantis ( Orbiter Vehicle Designation: OV‑104) is a Space Shuttle orbiter vehicle which belongs to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the spaceflight and space exploration agency of the United States.
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