The space shuttle Atlantis returned from NASA's final shuttle mission on Thursday, ending a 30-year era that opened the space frontier, exposed its dangers and established a toehold for future endeavors beyond Earth, according to Reuters. NASA workers lined the runway at the Kennedy Space Center before dawn to greet Atlantis and its crew upon their return from a successful 13-day cargo run to the International Space Station and to celebrate the conclusion of the shuttle program after 135 flights. Sailing through an unusually clear and moonlit night, Atlantis commander Chris Ferguson gently steered the 100-tonne spaceship high overhead, then nose-dived toward the swamp-surrounded landing strip a few miles from where Atlantis will go on display as a museum piece. Double sonic booms shattered the silence around the space center, the last time residents will hear the distinctive sound of a shuttle coming home. Ferguson eased Atlantis onto the runway at 5:57 a.m. EDT (0957 GMT), ending a 5.2 million-mile (8.4 million-km) journey and closing a key chapter in human space flight history. Atlantis' landing capped a three-decade-long program that made spaceflight appear routine, despite two fatal accidents that killed 14 astronauts and destroyed two of NASA's five spaceships. The last accident investigation board recommended the shuttles be retired after construction was finished on the space station, a $100 billion project of 16 nations. That milestone was reached this year, leaving the orbiting research station as the shuttle program's crowning legacy. Details of a follow-on program are still pending, but the objective is to build new spaceships that can travel beyond the station's near-Earth orbit and send astronauts to the moon, asteroids and other destinations in deep space "The things that you've done will set us up for exploration of the future," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden told the "final four" astronauts as they emerged from their ship. Ferguson thanked the thousands of workers involved in the program over the years and said he hoped "this fantastic vehicle" would inspire a new generation of space explorers. -- SPA
