Shuttle Atlantis Flight To ISS To Mark The Glorious End Of U.S Space Shuttle Program
Come Friday, July 8th, 2011, the world will witness the glorious end to a three decade long and highly successful U.S space shuttle program, as Shuttle Atlantis will mark the final flight with a cargo of four astronauts heading for the International Space Station (ISS). Under the auspices of the world’s most advanced space agency, NASA, the U.S began its space shuttle program thirty years ago and this last launch will mark the 135th flight in the program. The shuttle will be composed of Atlantis commander Chris Ferguson, pilot Doug Hurley, flight engineer Rex Walheim and Sandra Magnus, who will take off from Cape Canaveral, Florida in front of a crowd of a massive 750,000 tourists. With the retirement of the space shuttles, the ISS operations including delivery of astronauts and materials will have to be taken care of by private corporation, as well as Russian, European and Japanese space agencies.
Private companies have long vied to actively participate in the ISS program, apart from their space tourism portfolios. One such company Space Exploration Technologies (Space X) has already demonstrated its orbital spacecraft, Dragon capsule in the month of December last year and the company plans to make a successful flight to the ISS this year. Another private entity, Orbital Sciences Corp is currently working on its own orbital craft and has yet to showcase the craft’s capabilities. Till the time NASA can resume its space operation, which are expected to begin in the year 2015, U.S will have to rely primarily on Russian Soyuz rockets to ferry astronauts and supplies to the ISS.
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