4.9 Million Mile Journey: Atlantis Lands Safely

Atlantis landed after a 4.9 million mile journey on Wednesday 8.48 EDT after it’s final planned flight, there is a pending supply flight for Atlantis next year.

There are only 2 more planned flights this year one for each of the other shuttles, Endeavour and Discovery. They will continue with the outfitting and assembly of the international space station. Which is a multi nation project costing $100 Billion. The space station project has been running for 12 years now and there are 16 nations involved.

NASA first began flying the shuttles in 1981 and there is speculation that they are to be retired due increasing maintainance costs with some safety concerns as well. There is also the fact that they are not able to go beyond the orbit of the space station.

Mike Moses a shuttle program manager says :

“The shuttles are not old. They’re in fantastic shape. They fly perfectly and they do exactly what we need them to. We just don’t have the budget to continue to keep doing that, plus more, plus expand beyond low-Earth orbit, so at some point you just have to balance your book and decide what to do next. That’s the reality,”

Controversially President Barack Obama is trying to push a proposal through congress that will see a program to develop capsules and rockets geared towards landing a US astronaut on the moon cancelled in favour of a program to develop technology to travel further.