Final American shuttle - Atlantis blasts off:

The end of the Space Race

Chamari SENANAYAKE

The almighty USA, the first country to put man on the moon, have officially closed its Space Shuttle programme after the magnificent blast off of ‘Atlantis’, their final space shuttle on Friday. When Russia paved the way to space travel by sending Laika and (many other unnoticed animals) and Yuri Gagarin in to space, the space race began between Russia and USA, and became the hottest topic around the world since the 50’s. But soon, America managed to become the leaders in space since putting the first man on the moon.

A crowd of more than a million crammed into Cape Canaveral surrounding towns to bid an emotional farewell to the shuttle as they watched it lift off for its final mission. The crowds lined on causeways and beaches around the central Florida site, struggling for a last glimpse of the mighty ship that is shaping an era of America’s space travel. Millions more watched on television and on Internet. Atlantis flew with a minimum number of crewmembers, only four, with one female astronaut Sandra Magnus, with Commander Chris Ferguson, Rex Walheim, and Doug Hurley.

Atlantis’s crew is to deliver a year’s worth of critical supplies to the International Space Station and return with as much trash as possible. The shuttle is scheduled to come home on July 20 after 12 days in orbit. The legendary final step-Atlantis was launched from the same pad used more than a generation ago by the Apollo astronauts. Once Atlantis lands on earth at the end of her mission, it and the other two shuttles, Discovery and Endeavour will officially become the world’s most expensive museum pieces.

Even before the Apollo11 moon landing in 1969, NASA had begun early studies of space shuttle designs. In 1969 President Richard Nixon formed the Space Task Group, and the shuttle program was formally launched in 1972. The first orbiter was supposed to be named Constitution, but a massive campaign from fans of the, then world famous TV series Star Trek convinced the White House to change the name to Enterprise, the name of the fictional ship of Star Trek. In recognition of its fictional namesake, Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry and most of the actors of the original series of Star Trek were at its dedication ceremony.

The first Orbiter - Enterprise was used by NASA for many years for a variety of ground and flight tests that were intended to validate aspects of the shuttle program. Enterprise underwent five free flights and was landed under astronaut control. On August 12, 1977, the space shuttle Enterprise flew on its own for the first time. In 1979, it was mated with an external tank and solid rocket and tested in a launch configuration at Kennedy Space Centre. Today, it is the main attraction at the Smithsonian Institute’s National Air and Space Museum. However, the first fully functional orbiter was the Columbia, which was first launched on April 12, 1981 on the 20th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s space flight. Many years later and after many flights, Columbia was lost 16 minutes before its expected landing on earth, on February 1, 2003, killing all of its seven-crew members, and bringing the world to a standstill.

Space Shuttles Challenger and Discovery were built next, in 1982 and 1983, and Challenger was also destroyed on January 28, 1986 with the loss of all seven astronauts on board while millions of people on the ground and in front of Televisions watched in horror with tears pouring down their eyes. Later, Endeavour was built to replace Challenger.

Atlantis and its sister ships Discovery, Endeavour, Challenger and Columbia are called Space Shuttle Orbiters. The orbiter is a reusable winged space plane that is a mixture of rockets, spacecraft, and aircraft. This space-plane can carry crews and payloads into low Earth orbit, perform on-orbit operations, then re-enter the atmosphere and land as a glider.

Atlantis has a big sister, who holds the record as the most-travelled space shuttle in the world. Discovery, which brought its remarkable 27-year career to an end in March, have had her maiden flight in 1984 carrying two communication satellites, and since then she has carried on 39 missions, with a cumulative total of one full year (365 days) in space.

When the shuttles succeeded, it did so in a spectacular way but its failures were also large and tragic. A year after the Columbia tragedy, President George W Bush announced the retirement of the Shuttle Programme and put NASA on a course back to the moon. But, President Barack Obama cancelled the back-to-the-moon programme in favour of trips to an asteroid and Mars.

Because of this, the end of the shuttle programme has been compared to the end of the Apollo moon program in the 1970s, which also left thousands of people out of work, but this time, the space shuttle era will take away the jobs of about 24,000 people. In the future, the US, the first country to put a man on the moon, will have to rely on Russia to fly its astronauts to the space station; in other words, they will have to ask Russia for a lift. However, the services of all these shuttles were immense. If not for them, we would not have many Satellites up in space frequently being repaired and re-sent, or have a Hubble telescope unravelling the secrets of the universe to us. And if not for these Space Shuttles, who frequently take satellites in to space, we would not be using internet or mobile phones.