Space shuttle Atlantis lands, ending NASA’s shuttle program

Story from The Takeaway. Listen to audio above for full report.

The mood was bittersweet in Cape Canaveral. this morning, as the space shuttle Atlantis landed, bringing NASA’s 30-year-old shuttle program to a close. A permanent marker will be placed on the runway where Atlantis touched down just before 6:00 AM EDT.

In its final mission, the 135th of the shuttle program, Atlantis brought supplies to the International Space Station. With the end of the shuttle era, NASA’s involvement in future space flight has been called into question.

The Shuttle Program began with the launch of Columbia on April 12, 1981. The program advanced space exploration into the twenty-first century. Contrary to the Apollo missions, which sparked fierce competition between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, the space shuttle program existed mostly in an era of collaboration and cooperation between nations.

The Hubble Telescope delivered vibrant photos of the universe into our homes, and the International Space Station brought astronauts from across the world to work in orbit. The Shuttle Program also suffered its share of tragedies, most memorably the explosion of the Challenger on January 28, 1986, and the Columbia disintegrating on February 1, 2003.

Richard Heib, a former astronaut, joined NASA in 1979, two years before the first shuttle launch. He became an astronaut in 1986, six months after the mid-air explosion of the shuttle Challenger. Heib flew three missions between 1991 and 1994.

Heib talked to The Takeaway about the legacy — and the enduring value — of the Shuttle Program: “None of this would have been possible without the thousands of people that said, ‘This is something that I’m going to make work,’ and they did. And here we are, 135 missions later,” he said.

Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, is an astrophysicist and director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History. He explained on The Takeaway that the Shuttle Program extended the engineering frontier, but not the space frontier. “I was perfectly happy with the space shuttle,” he said. “My big problem was, why isn’t NASA simultaneously building another kind of ship to go beyond low Earth orbit?”

It’s critical for the US to be ambitious with its space program, deGrasse Tyson asserts. “The country needs to understand that when you have ambitions such as that, that are fulfilled and funded, its effect on a nation … it creates an attitude towards how you might embrace science, engineering, technology and of course mathematics … and that attitude transforms your economy, it transforms your culture, it reengages people.”

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“The Takeaway” is a national morning news program, delivering the news and analysis you need to catch up, start your day, and prepare for what’s ahead. The show is a co-production of WNYC and PRI, in editorial collaboration with the BBC, The New York Times Radio, and WGBH.