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>>Fergie, Doug, Sandy, and Rex.

Good luck, God speed, and have a little fun up there.

Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX

Verify ready to resume count and go for launch.

>>Two, one, zero and lift off.

>>When the engines light and then those solid rocket boosters

light you know you're gonna go flying.

If the bolts didn't fire they would pull the launch pad with it.

It's that much power.

>>Having a chance to fly the most amazing flying machine ever built

was just incredible.

>>Every time a child draws a spaceship for us and

sends it to us it's in the shape of a Space Shuttle.

That image, the silhouette of the Space Shuttle is an iconic

image that I think is going to last for generations.

>>The pure number of astronauts that

the Space Shuttle program brought to space

have made a difference for humanity.

>>What I think one of the most lasting achievements of the

shuttle program was I think it allowed us to carry so many

people into orbit that had such a wide spectrum of backgrounds

and capabilities and it allowed young people to dream.

>>This exhibit is a powerful reminder of NASA's

unmatched accomplishments during more than 50 years of exploration

and the great future that lies ahead.

With their payload bay doors wide open,

Atlantis is literally reaching out with open arms to welcome

all visitors, create our unprecedented achievements in space,

and inspire a new generation.

>>Atlantis has flown 126 million miles in space,

2 and a half million handmade parts.

It was made by man and it was made by people that were

dedicated to the program for over 30 years and that really is

something really special.

This is not the end of the program and

thats really a strong message.

We've got a great opportunity on STS-136 here, which is the

next mission for Atlantis and that is to inspire

and teach and really

get the next generation of kids ready to go to space.

>>Of my 7 Space Shuttle flights, 5 of them

were on the Space Shuttle Atlantis so obviously

Atlantis is my favorite bird.

But when I first walked into the facility down there I was

overwhelmed and then when the curtains opened and you walk out

and see Atlantis being so perfectly displayed

it was a very melancholy moment for me.

I had a mixture of emotions.

I had an overwhelming joy of seeing it being displayed so well

so that people could get up close to it and see the wonders

of the incredible devise, the incredible hardware that we flew in space.

But at the same time I had this feeling that I wish we were

still flying to vehicle because because it was an incredible flying machine.

And it gave us capabilities to operate in space

we may never see again.

>>After 30 years of missions,

the Space Shuttle program is over.

The orbiters are now gifts to the American people.

Atlantis at the Kennedy Space Center visitors complex in Florida...

Discovery now at the Smithsonian National Air

And Space Musuem in Virginia...

Endeavour put on quite a show on its way to the California

Science Center in Los Angeles.

And Enterprise, the first shuttle used only in test landings,

is on display at the Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum in New York City

with the massive orbiters relegated to museums,

2011 and the final flight of the Space Shuttle is

now but a dream...

>>We would go down to places like the Kennedy Space Center

and people would come up to us and say ' Hey just want to

let you know I've been working for 25 years and this is my last day.'

And at first you would say,

I'm so sorry but almost to a person they would come back

and say ' No don't be sorry.

I am so happy that I was able to be a part of this program.'

And so it was really amazing to see the dedication people

had to that program.

But there's one other thing the shuttle would be remembered for.

Beauty.

The shuttle was just as beautiful on its last flight

as it was on its first.

When we were in the Astrovan on the way to the launch pad for

STS-135, we rounded the final curb and headed straight for it.

The view of the shuttle on the launch pad was simply

breathtaking as it always is.

>>2, 1, 0 and lift off.

The final lift off of Atlantis.

>>People always say how does it feel to fly the last flight

and for me the time it hit me the most I think was when

we undocked from the space station and I was looking out

the window and I could see the station and I was shooting a

hand held laser to give us data about how for it was away.

Then I backed away from the window and kind of floated down

to a corner and as I did I had a few seconds

and I heard Ron Garren on the Radio say,

>>"Atlantis will be parting from

the International Space Station for the last time."

>>And it just gave me a little bit of a lump in the throat

and I go, "Wow this is it."

>>Atlantis weighs anchor from the International Space Station

for the last time.

Twelve and a half years of shuttle missions to build and

service a million pound complex at an end.

>>Space Shuttle flight director and NASA veteran

since the 1960's, Milt Heflin, is the only person to be present

at the final splashdown of Apollo, and the final landing

of the Space Shuttle.

>>When Atlantis came out of the darkness for the 135 landing at

the end of the runway my thought was

boy, she is really strutting her stuff.

She is kind of looking at us and telling us, ok, you guys we're

really good at what we're doing and we're stopping it.

I just want you to know I recognize that,

I'm not happy about that, but we have accomplished a lot in this program.

>>The final touchdown of Atlantis ended an era for the world's

first and only re-usable spacecraft...

>>I believe the Space Shuttle is going to go down in history as

one of the most remarkable advances in aviation and in space ever.

A reusable space vehicle.

We have never had one before.

That was such a giant leap forward.

>>I think we've also done an awfully lot in the last 30 years.

The shuttle and the space station,

international partnership, the total spectrum of what has come

out of that activity in my judgment is equal to at least

the accomplishment of landing on the moon.

>>It is a vehicle that houses 1960's and 1970's technology.

We have learned to take these technologies and put them to

work and get more out of them then we ever imagined before.

>>You had an airplane that could launch like a rocket,

go up into space and be a spacecraft,

spend 2 weeks in orbit, fly back down and land on a runway

like a big cargo airplane.

Nothing before it and nothing since has taken its place.

>>The concept of a re-usable space plane has been around as long as

NASA began launching men into orbit with rockets,

beginning with the Mercury Program in the early 1960's.

With Gemini and later Apollo, the rockets only got bigger as

the United States landed on the Moon in the first 10 years of

its space program.

>>Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.

>>The moon landings were mankind's greatest feat,

but as john young and charlie duke scampered on the moon's

surface in the spring of 1972, Congress approved funding for

NASA's next goal...to make Space a livable and workable place...

at a more affordable price.

The people who got us to the Moon began to turn their

attention to the Space Shuttle.

>>The concept was re-usable and I think that was a nobel endeavor

and it turned out to be a re-usable space craft

took a lot of care and feeding but that was the goal.

>>Glynn Lunney, a veteran flight director of Apollo,

would become one the early program managers of the Space Shuttle.

>>NASA and the space team had a pretty clear goal

of building a machine that could take people and things

up the Earth's orbit and bring them back home

and it could do it fairly lively,

much more reliably then we were doing with the Apollo

and it could do it more cheaply.

When it was ultimately approved by President Nixon in 1972

the whole project picked up a great amount of steam and moved

forward in the design of this vehicle turned out to be

partially re-usable and thats what took us into the shuttle program.

>>As Lunney oversaw the Skylab and Apollo-Soyuz missions of the mid-70's,

the shuttle began to take shape.

>>So while we were doing that there was major progress being made

in the design and construction of the Space Shuttle

and I give full credit to Bob Thompson who was

the program manager on all those years of the 70's

and to his team of people.

>>So the issue we're arguing is a functional test.

You ought a just function a test...

>>We thought we might want to build a two stage fully re-usable

vehicle with a big flyback booster at Marshall and a big orbiter.

A JSC much like the Apollo mode.

But that vehicle was quite complex.

It cost quite a bit.

So we figured out a more simple way to do the same thing

which in my judgement turned out to be

a better way to do the whole thing.

>>The Space Shuttle was a new way to fly.

Its development was plagued by cost overruns,

delays, and critics, but by 1981,

Apollo veteran John Young and rookie Bob Crippen

were ready to fly the shuttle's first mission.

With its solid rocket boosters, external tank,

and main engines on the Orbiter Columbia,

the Space Shuttle was set to make history.

And on April 12th, Columbia blasted off from

Launch Complex 39 at Kennedy Space Center...

>>6,5,4 we've gone from main engine starts

And the shuttle has cleared the tower.

>>It was almost miraculous that it flew that first time.

A friend of mine in the astronaut office said it

looked like a butterfly bolted to a bullet.

It just took my breath away, it rattled my bones to be that

close to a space launch.

>>As soon as Columbia lifted off...Mission Control at

Johnson Space Center in Houston took over the flight.

Milt Heflin was monitoring the orbiter's power systems in a

back room that day.

>>I'm fully expecting as this thing launches,

I'm looking at numbers on a display.

I'm looking at power distribution,

the fuel cell operation.

I was amazed how as we launched that it was just...

have we really launched?

It looks to me that by the displays here hardly anything is changing.

Very surprising.

Took a little while to get over that good feeling.

>>Space transportation system or STS-1 would be a near perfect flight,

landing on a dry lake bed at Edwards Air Force Base

two days later.

The Space Shuttle would be a game changer for NASA.

And over the next 30 years, 355 astronauts and cosmonauts

would fly on a shuttle, all describing it as the

most incredible flying machine ever built.

>>It's a behemoth, it's a monster,

its a skyscraper right in front of you.

Gleaming white under the lights.

Making noise, it's groaning and moaning because

of the liquid hydrogen thats inside of it.

>>You get your suit on, you make the five, six mile trip

out to the pad and then we take turns getting in,

but as a pilot during that time you're thinking about

every scenario that you've been trained for.

For me, my technique was I got in and strapped the vehicle to my body.

It became an extension of me.

You have to remember it's a four and a half million pound vehicle

sitting on its tail, thats going to lift off under

several million pounds of thrust, burn propellents at a rate of twelve

tons a second, and go supersonic in less than a minute.

There's no other vehicle that operates like that.

>>And we have a go for auto sequence start.

>>When it gets to thirty seconds, that's when it starts

to really get your attention.

>>Firing chain is armed.

>>And then as the clock's counting down from thirty seconds and

you see the ten, nine, eight,

>>T-minus ten, nine, eight

>>Suddenly I felt this rush of adrenaline because,

oh we're really gonna go right.

>>Seven, Six...

>>We're just inside seven seconds

the three Space Shuttle main engines ignite sequentially.

>>Four, three...

>>And between the three of them the produce about

a million pounds of thrust.

>>Two, one...

>>The solid rocket boosters ignite.

>>Zero and lift off.

Lift off Lift off Lift off and Lift off

>>And that is it. Bang

>>The shuttle has cleared the tower.

>>That explosion out the back end

when those boosters ignite is something that could not be simulated.

>>Roger Roll Endeavour

>>Houston is now controlling.

>>You know you are leaving town right now.

It's a lot like driving down in a car with loose shocks on a

gravel road because it is just bouncing and rocking.

>>I remember not being about to read the screens out in the

front because we were vibrating so much.

I was kind of like, wow

>>The sound is so intense you feel it as much as hear it.

>>I remember looking at the mach meter as it increased through

mach 3 and I'm looking at it and I said holy smokes.

And you find yourself going, wow what a machine this is.

>>One minute fifty seconds into the flight we're standing by for

separation of the twin solid rocket boosters Discovery now

traveling 2,695 miles an hour.

>>At about 60 miles we're leveled off and accelerating

at three times to force of gravity.

>>Standing by for solid rocket booster separation.

>>When you leave the atmosphere and you lose the solid rockets

then it's nothing but pure acceleration.

>>Big flash in the window and they separate away and it was

instantly smooth, quiet and I thought just for a second my

heart kind of leaped and I thought oh my God

all the engines have stopped.

You know. We're going to die.

>>And that's when you experience zero gravity for the first time.

>>Your introduction to weightlessness is just really fabulous.

All of the sudden everything in the cabin is floating.

I used to have dreams when I was a kid that I would run down

the street and put my arms out in front of me and lift off

and fly like Peter Pan or Superman

and thats what weightlessness is like.

It's just the most wonderful experience on Earth or above Earth.

It is just the neatest thing you can hover in midair.

You fly everywhere you go.

You don't have to walk anywhere.

>>Looking back at the Earth whether it was in

daylight or in darkness was just amazing.

So when you're going 17,500 miles an hour every 45 minutes

the sun comes up or it goes down as you're orbiting around the

Earth and watching the transition as you're going from

darkness into daylight and then back into darkness you know

45 minutes later was surreal.

You saw sights that you just don't see on Earth.

>>When we talk about discoveries and things that happen to human beings

when they have the opportunity to go to space

your perspective of our Earth really changes.

My first time in space when I looked up after we got to orbit

I saw this big island and I realized it was the continent of Africa.

And it was the continent from which my heritage and I had

tears come down my face because their were no lines so all the study

of the geography of the planet it just went out the window.

>>The Space Shuttle actually operated like a rocket during launch,

a spaceship while we're in orbit but then it's a hundred

and ten ton glider when we come back in for re entry and landing.

>>Atlantis Houston you are go for the de orbit burn.

>>We hit the atmosphere about 4000 miles before the landing point

and the heat starts to build up.

>>Copy Houston go for the de orbit burn.

>>And outside it started out black.

Then it got kind of grayish outside and then went to white

and then yellow and orange and it was flashing and I floated up

and looked down at the nose cap and it's normally a black carbon material

and it was carnation pink.

And my eyes got this big.

And embers are going by my window, and I thought of a couple of things,

I thought, wow, the simulator doesn't do this

and then the second thing was, I hope it's not important.

>>Atlantis is now 6 1/2 minutes from landing at altitude 81,000 feet,

traveling 1700 miles per hour.

>>So we s-turn the vehicle to control the energy as we get

lower in the atmosphere.

Once we come over the top of the runway,

the pilots really go to work.

That's when we take manual control for the first time as we go sub-sonic.

>>Arrival announced by a twin sonic boom as it drops

below the speed of sound.

>>And remember, at this point, we're over the runway at

40,000 feet and in four minutes we're going to be on ground.

>>The shuttle's decent rate is 20 times steeper than a commercial airliner.

It's angle of attack, more than seven times steeper.

>>You dive down to about two thousand feet and you start the

nose up...you're aiming a mile short of the runway.

And remember, you're just a glider,

and you can't go around.

At 400 feet, the pilot puts the landing gear down.

The gear is down and locked.

And then the commander lands it around 200 knots.

>>Main gear touch down.

>>Pilot puts the drag sheet out at about 185 or so.

And then you roll to a stop.

That last hour..the hour from the burn until the wheel stops

on the runway is an amazing hour.

>>And I'll never forget, I got the biggest smile on my face

and said, "Wow, that was fun.

I want to go back and do that all over again!"

>>The Space Shuttle program.

That was one of the programs that I think that this country

had that pooled everybody together.

Whenever there was a Space Shuttle launch,

no matter where you were, they felt pride in America.

The inspiration for the American people from

the Space Shuttle program, I think

is going to be hard for us to duplicate in this country.

>>Almost 10 years after the last Lunar Mission,

the U.S. Space program roared back to life with the Space Shuttle.

NASA, like the rest of the country,

was changing with the times in the new shuttle era.

Gone were the chain-smoking skinny ties of the Moon program days.

Milt Heflin, who was moving up the ladder to flight director,

witnessed the transformation...

>>When the shuttle program started,

as far as the men and women...the team in this room,

uh, and the way they did their business,

not a damn thing changed.

Yes, and the difference would have been that more minorities...

women became a bigger part of the team.

Outstanding, what they did.

>>The Astronaut Corps was taking on a contemporary look too

when NASA announced a new class of astronauts in 1978.

Designed to carry up to 7 astronauts,

including pilots and mission specialists,

the shuttle opened up space travel to a wider spectrum of candidates.

>>It wasn't until Space Shuttle when we specifically said

we really want to include women and minorities in the mix.

We really evolved the type of astronauts that we have.

The type of things that we were able to do in space.

We had women doctors.

We had all kinds of people that we brought in to the

space program, the likes of which we had never seen before.

>>Well, it was pretty exciting and this was the largest group of

astronauts that they had ever taken.

They were actually going to take six women.

I was surprised that took that many in a class of 35

that were to start in mid-1978.

I think the six women immediately became pretty close

because we knew that this was going to be different for women.

They wanted to make sure that women were suited to this kind

of position and I felt very fortunate that I was part of that group.

>>The thing that I found very interesting was that NASA had

already accepted the idea that they were going to have women in this class.

I'm sure some our male colleagues,

particularly the pilots who had been to Viet Nam and probably

weren't used to working with women professionally maybe

had their doubts of how we were going to do.

But I think we quickly fit in and proved that we were

going to do a good job.

>>It wasn't like the early days of space exploration where it was

test pilots flying vehicles where we were learning.

We were going to take the Space Shuttle and we were going to

live and work in it in space and were going to need lots of

different skills lots of different experiences

and so the Astronaut Corps actually reflected that.

>>America would soon have new heroes...

Astronauts that represented every segment of the population...

The Challenger crew on STS-41G in 1984 was a model of NASA's

next generation of space explorers...

>>We had seven crew members. The first time seven flew.

We had the first time foreign payload specialist,

Mark Garneau from Canada flew on board that flight.

And also another payload specialist was from Australia.

Paul Scully-Power so, it was quite an eclectic crew and

two of them were women, Kathy Sullivan and Sally Ride.

Kathy and I were going out and do a space walk and Kathy was

going to be the very first woman in the world to ever do a space walk.

And there was a lot of media attention and a lot of that had

to do with Bob Crippen, who flew the very first shuttle flight

was the Commander and Sally Ride,

being on that flight, being the first American woman.

Nobody wanted to ask us any questions, or talk to us.

They only wanted to talk to those other three.

So we had a lot of time kibitzing from the sidelines and

enjoying all the attention that the other folks were getting.

>>The diversity of the class of 1978 would inspire waves of

astronauts to follow...

>>I didn't have that goal to become an astronaut growing up.

Frankly, little girls couldn't grow up to be astronauts in the early sixty's.

And then when I was in college, the first group of women

were selected as astronauts.

So it then became a reality that that could be a potential.

My first day in Houston was Sally Ride's last day in Houston.

And to meet her, to meet one your role models who literally

had opened those doors that had previously been closed to women

was quite astounding.

Kathy Sullivan, the first female to do an EVA.

There are so many in that first group of women astronauts

that you look up to and say, "this is something I can do now."

>>Cady Coleman was selected as an astronaut in 1992.

Today, she's NASA's Senior Astronaut with flights on

two Space Shuttle missions

and an expedition to the International Space Station.

>>It's become clear to me in recent years that there's a

perspective that everybody brings that comes from their diversity.

If you can see it, you can be it.

And if you don't see it, then it just might not occur to you.

That the importance of actually on film.

on TV, in a book, in an advertisement,

seeing somebody that you can identify with.

Probably that looks a little bit like you...the value of that

cannot be over stated in that you see somebody like that

and you think that maybe I could do this.

>>During three decades of shuttle missions,

49 women would fly into space.

Astronauts would include people of every ethnicity,

including flyers from 16 different nations.

As each shuttle hurtled into space,

everyone could look skyward and know "they were flying for me."

>>Three, two, one.

We have SRB ignition and the history's largest astronaut crew

is on it's way.

>>In the early 80's, NASA was on a roll as three more orbiters

joined Columbia in the shuttle fleet.

With Challenger, Discovery, and Atlantis added to the rotation,

the space agency launched 24 successful missions in the first

five years of the shuttle program.

The 25th mission would end in tragedy.

>>We have main engine start.

Four, three, two, one and lift off.

Lift off of the 25th Space Shuttle mission and it has

cleared the tower.

>>Challenger, go with throttle up.

>>Roger, go with throttle up.

>>In 15 seconds, velocity 2,900 feet per second,

altitude 9 nautical miles, down range distance seven nautical miles.

>>the Challenger accident in 1986 would set the shuttle program

back for over 2 years.

>>Make sure you maintain all your data.

Start pulling it together.

>>For Hoot Gibson and Rhea Seddon, the first astronauts to marry,

the loss would be very personal.

>>My second mission which was aboard Columbia,

launched on January, 12th of 1986 and we landed on January 18th of 1986.

We were at a real high point at that time.

Just ten days later, January 28th was when we lost the

Space Shuttle Challenger and lost the entire crew.

>>We had all turned on the television to watch it even in

our training session because all of us liked to watch our friends get to fly.

And when the explosion happened, you know,

everybody thought, the boosters came off too soon.

Where did the boosters go? What happened?

The shuttle's still out there flying on it's main engines and

as we began to see things fall into the ocean,

we realized that they were gone.

>>Flight controllers here looking very carefully at the situation.

Obviously, a major malfunction.

>>You know, there were so many close friends on that flight.

A number of them had been in our class.

It was the first time in my adult life that I had friends die.

To have so many of them die at the same time and to watch it

was just incredibly, incredibly sad.

>>We learned an awful lot of very difficult,

very painful lessons with Challenger.

I will never forget being on top of the world when I finished my

second space flight which was my first flight as Mission Commander

and in the space of just 10 days dropping down

into the deepest darkest hole you could ever imagine.

>>Challenger hit close to home for me because my husband

had just landed from his second flight.

And I remembered standing on the roof of the launch control center

where families watched launches and it was incredibly

incredibly cold when they launched.

Some of those mornings where almost as cold as that morning

when the Challenger launched.

And to me to realize that that could have been my husband.

I always was more afraid when Hoot flew.

More afraid that I was going to be the spouse that was left behind.

>>The goal of frequent access to space now seemed like

an elusive dream for NASA.

The failure of a solid rocket booster "o" ring in cold weather

caused the agency and the space industry to re-tool every

procedure in the shuttle program from bottom up.

When the shuttle returned to flight with discovery in

September, 1988, the outlook for the program was changing...

>>After I left the shuttle was severely curtailed.

It was not going to be the system that people

thought it was before the accident.

A lot of the customers that we had went onto different launch vehicles

so the content of what we were going to do changed

and diminished frankly.

And then the shuttle come back flying but basically was there

to support NASA's programs itself.

With commercial satellites and defense payloads going elsewhere,

nasa was under pressure to deliver science

and the deployment of the hubble telescope by sts-31 seemed like

just the thing in 1990.

Hubble's mirrors were nearsighted though

and challenger's replacement, endeavour,

was sent to fix it in 1993.

>>We lost Mars observer on our way to Mars,

unmanned probe.

So NASA, collectively manned and unmanned,

we were a bit in the doghouse at that time.

The December that we flew the repair mission STS-61,

I got back to my office and there was a single sheet of

paper laying on my desk and it was a copy out of the

Congressional record.

And that page basically said NASA if you are unable to

accomplish this repair mission then be aware that your future

in funding is going to be in jeopardy.

That was probably the first time that I paused and thought to myself,

holy cow.

>>A veteran crew that featured 36 grueling hours of spacewalks by

Kathryn Thornton, Tom Akers, Jeff Hoffman,

and Story Musgrave saved Hubble from being a monumental failure.

>>That's the way I was beating the drum.

I wanted to keep the cadence up and the very first spacewalk

we did we had some problems closing some doors.

We overcame that because Story Musgrave basically had this idea

that I thought was excellent and the team on the ground here,

the collective team, was a little bit nervous about it but

I'm thinking to myself Story knows what the hell he's doing

he's not going to hurt anything.

And so as a flight director I had the...

it's easy.

I gave the go for him to do that.

And we stayed on the timeline.

The thing that I enjoy the most as a lead flight director on that

flight is that as we accomplished things in the mission

I noticed looking around the room that initially there

were a lot of tense, locked jaws no smiles, peoples heads down working.

But as we were doing the mission occasionally you would see

someone grin at you after we did something,

accomplished something.

>>And we have to say that through your superb efforts you have

really shown that NASA can do all that we promise to do and more.

>>And those grins just kept coming.

>>The EVA's of STS-61 proved that humans could work and adapt

in space better than anyone could imagine.

The mission laid the groundwork for much of NASA's future and

four subsequent service missions to Hubble,

making the telescope one of the shuttle's greatest achievements.

>>I selected Hubble because, again it's this icon of not only the

shuttle program but for all of NASA.

>>An army helicopter pilot, Nancy Currie grappled Hubble with the

shuttle's robotic arm on STS-109 in 2002.

>>Currie now moving in for

the grapple of the Hubble Space Telescope.

Grapple confirmed.

>>My saying was if I don't grapple it you guys don't

get to do an EVA so lets take first things first.

>>And seeing this giant spacecraft come right up beside me and

Nancy reached up, grabbed it, stacked it in the back and

we climbed all over it like ants for about a week and fixed it.

>>Linnehan's spacewalking partner was Hubble veteran John Grunsfeld,

who serviced the telescope in three separate missions...

>>It was this combination of humans extending our reach to

fix the telescope to allow us to use Hubble to look back to the

beginning of the universe and everything in between.

And each time the Space Shuttle went back to Hubble,

installed new instruments, made new upgrades over a series of

four flights, really transformed our view of the universe,

our view of ourselves where we came from.

And set the story of the Space Shuttle as this remarkable machine.

>>The Space Shuttle pushed its performance limits to service

the Hubble and its crews knew they were taking greater risks...

>>The shuttle has only the capability to go about 350

maybe a little bit more nautical miles up and then come back again.

And so when we come back we literally have just enough fuel left in our tanks,

we burn into exhaustion to get home.

So if things don't go exactly right,

we may not come home from a Hubble mission and that's always

been one of the reasons it's considered a bit more dangerous

that other shuttle missions.

>>But the risks were worth it to add to the Hubble's legacy...

The most prolific and important scientific instrument ever built

by man is the Hubble Space Telescope.

It's produced more science, more PHD's,

more knowledge about the universe in terms of who we are

and where we are in the universe than anything we've ever done.

>>John Grunsfeld recalls saying goodbye to Hubble in 2009

after his 8th EVA to repair and upgrade the telescope...

>>Coming into the airlock at the end of that fifth EVA I thought

I can't believe that we actually accomplished everything

we set out to do and a little bit more.

The next day we put the Hubble on the end of the robotic arm.

>>3,2,1 release.

Let go. Backed away.

And over the course of an orbit saw Hubble drift away.

And I wasn't sad I was actually really happy that we'd given

Hubble the best opportunity to have a long observant career ahead of it.

But I'm still thrilled that we were about to give Hubble a long life.

The legacy of the Space Shuttle program,

I think when folks look back hundreds of years from now,

will be the launch and servicing of the Hubble Space Telescope.

It has given us such an incredible view of the universe.

It's opened our eyes to the wonders and beauty of the

universe in a way that I think will never be equalled.

And it was only through the ability to go up and grab the

Hubble and send people out, like myself,

in space suits to put new instruments in that allowed us

to have these incredible views.

>>When I grew up I was a Trekkie, Star Trek, what kid wasn't.

And I just wanted to be an astronaut.

But there was a couple episodes there where they're flying

through giant amebas and there's these colors and all these

beautiful things and I go, It's beautiful but it can't look like that.

Well you know what, when we got those Hubble pictures back,

it does look like that.

It's like it's almost how do you determine where art and science

you know, stop or blend together.

That's the magic thing about Hubble and the Space Shuttle

in terms of what it's done.

>>America's heartland...a small town in Nebraska is home to

astronaut Clayton Anderson.

His journey to becoming an astronaut was a long one.

His career at Johnson Space Center began as a college intern in 1981

and it would be 17 years before NASA would select him

as an astronaut.

Five years later, he was still waiting for a flight assignment.

His job on February 1, 2003 was to support the families of the

crew during the routine return of STS-107 to Cape Canaveral.

>>I was intimately involved in that entire mission so much so

that on the landing day, I was at the cape near the shuttle

landing facility playing with the kids,

tossing freebies in the grass, waiting for Colombia to re-enter

and land at the Kennedy Space Center.

>>For the seven person crew aboard Columbia,

the mood was light and re-entry into the earth's atmosphere seemed routine.

This is amazing.

It's really getting really bright out there.

Yea, you definitely don't want to be out there now.

>>Minutes later, there were signs the landing wasn't routine, however.

Milt Heflin, now chief of flight directors,

was watching from mission control.

>>I was sitting in the viewing room, behind the control team and mission control

that saturday morning with Ron Epps,

one of the Division Chiefs and The Flat Operations Organization.

He and I were just talking sports and other stuff.

As the order was coming across the states and the team was at

that point when it got close to the central part of the states,

and over Texas and they're making the calls to the crew,

I began to sense something just didn't feel right

looking at the display and the track and so forth.

>>I had to turn to the grand stand where all the families were

standing up wondering now, what's going on here?

The clocks continuing.

We don't see or hear anything.

John Shannon, one of my flight directors, who was serving

behind the flight director as the missions ops. director.

John, at one point got up, reached int he book case,

grabbed a big white binder, headed to the door.

At that time, I knew that this was not good.

>>Columbia, Houston Comm. check...

Columbia, Houston UHF Comm check...

Columbia, Houston UHF Comm. check...

>>He walked behind me and I said, "John, What's happening?"

And his words to me were, "We lost them."

>>When Columbia entered the atmosphere,

it disintegrated with pieces falling over east Texas and

neighboring states.

>>Eventually, Col. Cabanna came down and stood in front of the families

and told them there is no hope.

We've lost the crew.

Man, the screams and sobbing, it was just horrible.

>>I've been here for all three tragedies that we've had.

The Apollo 1 fire, Lost the Challenger. Lost Columbia,

but this one really happened on my watch.

That's been something I think about everyday.

>>The loss of the Orbiter Columbia set back NASA another 2 years

as it developed new safety procedures to look for

thermal tiles damaged by foam strikes during launch.

It was the beginning of the end of the shuttle,

but it had a mission to complete...

A mission that began in the decade prior to the Columbia disaster.

STS-60 in 1994 was the dawn of a new era of cooperation between

NASA and the Russian space agency when Sergei Krikalev

became the first cosmonaut to fly on a shuttle.

This mission and a series of shuttle flights docking with

the Russian space station Mir would lay the groundwork for

the International Space Station.

>>Congratulations Space Shuttle Atlantis,

space station Mir.

After twenty years, our space craft, our dock can orbit again.

>>I was asked to go back to Houston and fly one more

shuttle mission, and become the commander for what was going

to be the first joint Russian/American shuttle mission.

And as a marine, I said forget it.

You got the wrong guy.

I have no desire to fly with any Russians.

My boss at the time said, "Hey, there are two of them

who are going to be in town."

A guy named Sergei Krikalev, whom I ended up flying with,

and Vladimir Tehtoff, who eventually became his backup,

but they were the two candidates to fly the first

joint Russian/American mission.

And I went and had dinner with them that night,

and it was just an absolutely incredible experience where we'd

talked about our families, we talked about our kids.

We talked about our hopes for the future,

and the way we wanted to bring our nations together,

and I was reminded one more time what my mom and dad had

taught me, was that all people are the same.

Today, they are among my best friends.

>>Krikalev would return to space in Endeavour in 1998 to begin

the assembly of the International Space Station.

Nancy Currie remembers joining the American Unity Module

with the Russian Zarya.

>>To literally lay the corner stone,

was pretty overwhelming and humbling for me.

You know, not many people go to work when there's literally

millions of people looking over their shoulder saying,

sort of don't screw this up.

The first mission involved grappling that free flyer,

the Russian Zarya, that had launched two weeks prior to our

mission unmanned..

You know, grabbing it with the robotic arm and then mating it to the U.S. node.

>>Houston endeavor, we have Zarya firmly attached to the orbiter,

and we're half way home for the day.

>>Jerry Ross, the first astronaut to fly 7 shuttle missions and

perform 9 spacewalks, spent over 21 hours in space attaching the

hardware of the ISS building blocks.

>>In many ways, the International Space Station is one of the

crowning achievements of the Space Shuttle.

It was supremely adapted and suited for that type of work;

to carry large components into space and to carry the

crew members that were to do the assembly of them.

And to be on the crew that completed the first

three space walks, to basically lay the cornerstone of

The International Space Station, was an incredible honor.

>>Each subsequent flight added more pieces to the growing

mammoth in orbit.

STS-92 delivered the Z1 Truss for the first solar arrays and

Michael Lopez-Alegria made the first of his record-setting

10 spacewalks in 2000.

>>One of the greatest legacies

of the space station is the

international cooperation that

was required to pull it off,

and it continues even today.

When you think about these modules coming together,

that were designed using different measuring systems,

and even different alphabets in many cases.

The fact that it worked was not trivial,

but that extra effort has led to a lot of benefit for the

whole world community.

>>Being a part of the ISS program actually fulfilled some of the dreams

I had as a child where I looked and I thought,

imagine what it'd be like to launch off the planet and

rendezvous and dock with something in space.

So, when we were there on STS-92, there was no permanent crew onboard.

In fact, the first permanent crew was going to launch a week after we landed.

So when we got there, there wasn't anybody home.

In fact, I slept in it by myself one night with my daughters teddy bear.

That's probably the answer to a trivia question, right?

Who's the only person to have slept alone in the Space Station?

>>Crews that flew later shuttle missions since the return to

flight after Columbia, witnessed the completion

of the International Space Station.

>>The space Station itself looked like a tiny bug, actually.

A little golden bug in the distance.

Then as it blooms, really in our windows as we approach it,

we see all the fine detail.

You see the incarnation of some group of peoples audacity

to think that we could even do something like this.

Something that's almost two-acres in size,

the most complex machine ever built,

gleaming in gold, in all it's glory just right there in front of you

and actually you're about to run into it in a controlled docking

>>On the first mission, we brought the S0 Truss,

which was the central portion of the truss up to the space station.

At that point, the space station seemed big,

but by comparison on my final two missions,

it was small in comparison because it just kept growing and growing.

And then we you approach it on the final mission,

when I saw it just as an assembly completed.

just a magnificent facility.

>>The completion of the International Space Station

fulfilled the goal of the shuttle program to make space

a workable and livable place.

The astronauts who flew on the shuttle and walked in space

achieved that dream.

Their unique experience of the universe remains a legacy of

the shuttle program.

>>The most memorable experiences are doing spacewalks.

When you open the hatch, and you look outside.

The hatch faces down toward the earth,

and so you're sort of leaning over the edge and you're looking down.

And it's as if this magic sea two hundred miles away is going

beneath you and there are clouds, and maybe the ocean,

or maybe land and it almost seems unreal.

And then when you go out, everything is vivid.

There's no air, there's no dust, in your entire visual field,

you see the grandeur of space.

>>What struck me was, again the clarity and the beauty beyond

anything you can see even with a High Def TV.

Two hundred and fifty miles up and really feeling that distance,

and having it just kind of glide beneath you,

but in complete silence.

All you can hear is your fan inside your spacesuit.

The occasional comment inside your comm cap,

but other than that it's complete silence.

>>My last Space Shuttle flight was STS-110.

I had an opportunity at the end of the space walk to be on the

end of the robotic arm.

And during that trip, I watched the sun set in the west,

down the Mediterranean.

I watched as we came across Northern Africa on one side,

and Europe on the other side.

As we got closer to Israel and that area,

it was starting to turn to nighttime,

and you could start to see thunderstorms below with

lightening strikes going off all over the place.

And I can remember going right past the tail of the Space Shuttle

at night and almost could reach out and touch it.

And I could look down into the Payload bay and see

the lights of the Payload bay

and the windows up in the crew compartment.

And that's about the time that the sun come back up,

and I could see this glorious bathing of the space station

hardware in these beautiful colors of pinks and reds and

oranges and ultimately the whites as the sun came up

in a very fast fashion as it does on orbit.

>>While flying with Jerry, who had so much experience,

was just a real treat.

One of the best pieces of advise was to really burn some pictures

into your memory.

Every once in a while, I would try to look out and say,

ok now I remember this.

I remember being out in one of my EVAs and seeing the sun rise

over the horizon, you could see this incredible blue

right above the rim of the earth.

Or looking down at the gulf of California and down by Mexico,

and you could see all of the coast of California thinking,

I need to remember this. It's just an amazing sight.

On my third Space Shuttle flight, STS-37,

it was at night, and the three crew members inside

told me to take a break because they were concentrating on doing

some things with my spacewalking buddy out there J. Epp.

So I turned off my helmet motor lights.

"Here we go."

I just kind of leaned back, and I was looking at the universe

just enjoying it.

Not really thinking about much else other than trying to soak it all in.

When all of a sudden, I had this feeling,

this emotion come over me that I was at unity with the universe.

"It's a great ride."

I really did have a sensation that I was doing exactly what

God had designed me to do.

I was out there using my hands to fix things,

my brain to work on things, and that to me was a real epiphany moment

or a real confirming moment that I had made the right decisions

or followed the right guidance from God

throughout my life and throughout my career,

to get me to that point.

>>By making space our home, the Space Shuttle and the

International Space Station have set the stage for a new

generation of astronauts to take our next steps in space.

>>I think this is a great time to be a part of it,

because we're at a transitional phase.

So, being at that transition is kind of like an opportune moment

because you're like there on the ground floor when there's

a huge change that's about to take place.

There's a huge future beyond the Space Shuttle for space exploration.

And that includes learning as much as we can from

The International Space Station.

Taking all of that knowledge and potentially taking it to

grappling an asteroid, bring it back to our location and exploit it.

Or maybe going back to the moon and hopefully going to Mars one day.

>>Developing the technology and engineers for our future in

space is a mission for universities like the

Georgia Institute of Technology, which has produced

over a dozen astronauts and thousands of workers

in the aerospace industry.

Georgia Tech is helping land robotic rovers on Mars today...

And more in coming years.

>>The work that is going on in my lab, for instance,

related to entry, decent landing technologies.

We're not just working on the missions that are flying right now,

we're developing technologies for those missions

that will fly a decade or more from now.

In my lab right now, I have students working on technologies

that will one day enable us to land humans on Mars.

They become experts in those systems and then they go to a

place like NASA Langley Research Center or Johnson Space Center,

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and they take those ideas that they

started on here at tech and they mature them into real systems

and they actually get to fly and operate them.

>>The foundation needed for deep space missions like a

Mars expedition was built by the Space Shuttle,

the workhorse that carried the heavy payloads which is ISS today.

>>The Space Shuttle might have been the most visible symbol of

human space flight, but NASA's human space flight program remains strong.

And the center piece of the human space flight program

today, is the International Space Station.

What NASA's doing now, along with American industry,

is we're building the tools and capabilities that the systems

that will take humans out beyond low earth orbit.

Out to new destinations, out into deep space really for the first time.

Perhaps back to the moon, but you know,

my dream is that we don't stop there.

My dream is that we go all the way to Mars.

>>For future space explorers

destined to colonize the Moon or Mars,

the Space Shuttle will continue to be a symbol

of America's space program...

>>Every time a child, it's really precious,

a child draws a spaceship for us and sends it to us,

every single time, it's in the shape of a Space Shuttle.

That image, the silhouette of the Space Shuttle,

it's shape is an iconic image that I think is going to last for generations.

>>"Apollo, How's it going?"

"How are you?"

"Good, nice to see you again.

Welcome!"

>>The pure number of astronauts the Space Shuttle Program

brought to space have made a difference for humanity,

because so many people can look out;

can see a movie, a video, an advertisement,

a something, somebody can tell them a story about somebody

kind of like them that got to go to space.

And it doesn't mean they're going to go to space,

but it means that something that they thought was amazing and

could only happen to a special person,

happened to a real person.

And that the special thing, the special passion that they have,

that passion is possible as well.

Space Shuttle, that program did that for all of us.

>>Clayton Anderson first dreamed of being an astronaut

when he was six years old.

In 2007, his dream became a reality when he launched into space

on STS-117 and spent 152 days on the International Space Station.

It was an emotional moment when he framed a photograph

of his boyhood home...

When I figured out where I was, and I saw Omaha and Lincoln,

and my eyes localized in on my hometown of Ashland, Nebraska,

I couldn't take a picture.

I was crying.

All I could think about was, I was born and raised there,

and here I am two hundred and twenty-five miles above that spot

floating in space in zero gravity,

and living the dream that I had dreamed since I was a six year old kid.

And I didn't need a picture that day.

I just needed that experience that told me that that's where I belong.

>>Engine start.

..., and we are clear the tower.

>>Anderson returned to ISS on discovery as the shuttle program

began to wind down in 2010.

>>When the spacewalks were over and most of our job was complete,

then I began to get very nostalgic.

I felt sad.

I wanted to stay longer.

So to leave that place and close the hatch the last day,

and get back in Discovery...

>>Discovery departing.

>>That was pretty tough for me.

Not knowing if you were ever going to get back to that place,

and that's a very special place.

>>Now that the program is over, Anderson speaks for everyone

who misses the Space Shuttle.

The shuttles no longer soar into the heavens,

but America's heart remains in space.

>>Having the privilege to live and work on board a shuttle

and space station is the ultimate for me.

When I was seeing it come to an end, it was very difficult to grasp.

So. I'm honored that I had that privilege.

I'm honored that I was able to serve my country in that way.

And absolutely my heart is still there, yeah.

I think once an astronaut, always an astronaut.

And if they called me tomorrow and asked me to go again,

I would probably say yes.