Message:26218 In: TODAY.WW
From: KF5JRVDate: Tue, 21 Jul 26 09:09:00 Z
Newsgroups: TODAY.WW
Subject: Today in History - Jul 21
Message-ID: <28645_KF5JRV>
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On July 21, 2011, NASA’s space shuttle program completes its final, and 135th, mission, when the shuttle Atlantis lands at Ke
nnedy Space Center in Florida. During the program’s 30-year history, its five orbiters—Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atl
antis and Endeavour—carried more than 350 people into space and flew more than 500 million miles, and shuttle crews conducted
important research, serviced the Hubble Space Telescope and helped in the construction of the International Space Station, amo
ng other activities. NASA retired the shuttles to focus on a deep-space exploration program that could one day send astronauts
to asteroids and Mars.
In January 1972, two-and-a-half years after America put the first man on the moon in July 1969, President Richard Nixon publicl
y announced that NASA would develop a space transportation system featuring a space vehicle capable of shuttling “repeatedly
from Earth to orbit and back.” Nine years later, on April 12, 1981, at Kennedy Space Center, the first shuttle, Columbia, lif
ted off on its inaugural mission. Over the course of the next 54 hours, the two astronauts aboard NASA’s first reusable space
craft successfully tested all its systems and orbited the Earth 37 times before landing at Edwards Air Force Base in California
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