Skip to main content
Settings
Search
Appearance
Theme Mode
About
Theme
Jekyll v3.10.0
Environment Production
Last Build
2026-06-19 10:07 UTC
Repository
year-of-ai/2011
Changelog Docs Jekyll
Current Environment Production
Build Time Jun 19, 10:07
Jekyll v3.10.0
Build env (JEKYLL_ENV) production
Quick Links
Page Location
Source Code

Set repository: USER/REPO in your _config.yml to enable source-code shortcuts.

Page Info
Layout default
Collection none
Path science-technology/space-shuttle-final-mission.md
URL /science-technology/space-shuttle-final-mission/
Date 2011-07-21
Theme Skin
SVG Backgrounds
Layer Opacity
0.6
0.04
0.08

Space Shuttle Program Ends (July 21, 2011)

Category: Science & Technology Key figures: Chris Ferguson (Commander, STS-135), Douglas Hurley (Pilot), Sandra Magnus (Mission Specialist), Rex Walheim (Mission Specialist), Charlie Bolden (NASA Administrator), President Barack Obama

Summary

On July 21, 2011, at 5:57 AM EDT, Space Shuttle Atlantis touched down on Runway 15 at Kennedy Space Center’s Shuttle Landing Facility in Florida, completing mission STS-135 — the 135th and final flight of NASA’s 30-year Space Shuttle program. The landing ended an era of American human spaceflight that had begun with Columbia’s first flight on April 12, 1981.

The STS-135 Mission

STS-135 launched on July 8, 2011, at 11:29 AM EDT. The four-person crew — Commander Chris Ferguson, Pilot Douglas Hurley, and Mission Specialists Sandra Magnus and Rex Walheim — delivered the Raffaello multipurpose logistics module to the International Space Station (ISS), loaded with approximately 9,400 pounds of supplies, spare hardware, and experiments. The mission also retrieved a failed ammonia pump module and returned a spare parts platform to Earth for potential reuse.

The mission had been approved as a “contingency” flight in 2010 to maximize ISS supply utilization before commercial cargo vehicles became operational. Congress authorized STS-135 in a compromise that permitted the flight using existing hardware and a four-person crew (reduced from the usual six to seven) to limit costs. Total mission duration was 12 days, 18 hours, 28 minutes.

At touchdown, NASA’s Mission Control in Houston announced: “Having fired the imagination of a generation, a ship like no other, its place in history secured, the Space Shuttle pulls into port for the last time.” After the wheels stopped, Commander Ferguson radioed: “Mission complete, Houston. After serving the world for over 30 years, the shuttle has earned its place in history, and it has come to a final stop.”

The Shuttle Program in Numbers

The Space Shuttle program flew 135 missions from April 12, 1981, to July 21, 2011, spanning exactly 30 years, 3 months, and 9 days. The fleet comprised five operational orbiters:

  • Columbia (OV-102): First flight April 12, 1981; destroyed with crew of 7 on February 1, 2003, during re-entry (STS-107)
  • Challenger (OV-099): First flight April 4, 1983; destroyed with crew of 7 on January 28, 1986, 73 seconds after launch (STS-51-L)
  • Discovery (OV-103): First flight August 30, 1984; retired after STS-133 (March 9, 2011)
  • Atlantis (OV-104): First flight October 3, 1985; flew final mission STS-135
  • Endeavour (OV-105): First flight May 7, 1992; retired after STS-134 (June 1, 2011)

In total, the program carried 355 unique individuals to orbit (some flew multiple times), totaling 852 individual crew member flights. The shuttle logged 1,322 days, 19 hours, and 41 minutes of flight time across all missions. Two accidents claimed 14 lives: Challenger’s STS-51-L crew on January 28, 1986, and Columbia’s STS-107 crew on February 1, 2003.

Key Shuttle Accomplishments

The shuttle served as the primary vehicle for ISS construction, flying 36 assembly and supply missions between 1998 and 2011. It deployed the Hubble Space Telescope on April 25, 1990 (STS-31), and conducted five subsequent servicing missions, including STS-125 in May 2009 — the final Hubble servicing flight. The shuttle deployed planetary probes including the Galileo probe to Jupiter (STS-34, 1989) and the Magellan probe to Venus (STS-30, 1989). It also conducted Spacelab science missions and supported the Mir Space Station docking program in the 1990s.

The Gap in American Human Spaceflight

The shuttle’s retirement created a multi-year gap in the United States’ capability to independently launch astronauts to orbit. For the period from July 2011 until May 2020 — a span of nearly nine years — American astronauts could only reach the ISS aboard Russian Soyuz spacecraft, at a per-seat cost that rose from approximately $21.8 million in 2008 to $86 million by 2019. This dependence on Russian launch capabilities, during a period of rising geopolitical friction over Ukraine (beginning 2014), generated repeated Congressional criticism.

President Obama’s 2010 cancellation of the George W. Bush-era Constellation program (which had aimed to return Americans to the Moon by 2020 using Ares I crew launch vehicles and Orion capsules) was the critical policy decision that produced this gap. Obama’s plan instead directed NASA to focus on deep-space exploration objectives while contracting out low-Earth orbit crew transportation to commercial providers through the Commercial Crew Program.

The Rise of Commercial Spaceflight

The shuttle’s end catalyzed the commercial spaceflight industry. SpaceX — founded by Elon Musk in 2002 — had launched its first Falcon 9 rocket in June 2010. In May 2012, just ten months after STS-135’s landing, SpaceX’s Dragon capsule became the first commercial spacecraft to dock with the ISS. SpaceX’s Crew Dragon ultimately carried American astronauts to the ISS for the first time on May 30, 2020 (Demo-2 mission).

NASA awarded Commercial Crew Transportation Capability contracts to SpaceX ($2.6 billion) and Boeing ($4.2 billion) in September 2014. Boeing’s Starliner vehicle faced significant development delays, while SpaceX proceeded to become the primary crew transportation vehicle for NASA and international partners.

The four shuttle orbiters (excluding Columbia and Challenger, which were destroyed) were retired to museum display: Discovery at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Virginia, Atlantis at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida, and Endeavour at the California Science Center in Los Angeles.

Significance

The shuttle program’s conclusion symbolized the end of the Cold War–era model of government-monopolized human spaceflight. Having grown out of the post-Apollo drive to make spaceflight routine and affordable, the shuttle ultimately proved more expensive per flight than anticipated — costs per mission averaged roughly $1.5 billion in its final years. This cost structure, combined with the two fatal accidents, made the shuttle an unsustainable model for continued operations.

The program’s legacy was nonetheless transformative: it normalized human presence in low-Earth orbit, established the ISS as a permanent research platform, and — through its servicing of Hubble — demonstrated that human space operations could directly enable breakthrough scientific discovery. The shuttle era’s close marked the beginning of a more commercially diverse and internationally distributed approach to human spaceflight.

Sources