Atlantis will reach Kennedy Space Station tomorrow morning. Thirty years after the ambitious space shuttle programme began, is the project a triumph or an embarrassment?
Tomorrow marks the end of an era for global space flight, as a NASA space shuttle re-enters Earth's atmosphere for the final time. The Atlantis is due to touch down on the runway at the Kennedy Space Centre at 05:57 local time.
The shuttle left its dock at the International Space Station (ISS) yesterday morning, and is currently orbiting the Earth. On saying their goodbyes the astronauts aboard Atlantis gave two gifts to the ISS crew: a model of the shuttle, to remind them of the role it played in building the space station, and an American flag flown on the first shuttle flight in 1981. This flag will be handed to the next American astronauts to reach the ISS. If the orbiter makes a safe return, it will be put on public display for visitors to the Kennedy Centre.
For 30 years, the six different reusable craft that in turn made up the space shuttle program played a valuable role in colonising space. Carrying supplies to and from space stations, attaching sections to the ISS, repairing satellites and the Hubble Telescope, the ships took space flight from being glamorous and exciting to frequent and reliable.
But the 135 flights were not trouble free. Equipment failures in the Challenger shuttle in 1986 and the Columbia shuttle in 2003 resulted in a total of fourteen deaths.
The extreme danger, coupled with the massive cost of the project led to this month's 12-day flight being the programme's last.
The US's human presence in space has an uncertain future. With no other reusable shuttles, trips to the ISS must now be done using Russian Soyuz rockets. Commercial providers such as Virgin are building the next generation of space craft. These may eventually be contracted by NASA to do US space programme work, but none are expected to even be ready to enter space before 2014.
Science fiction or vanity?
The dream of the space shuttle programme was to make space travel routine and accessible, a necessary stepping stone to the stuff of science fiction: mass human space flight, floating villages, a life on Mars. With Atlantis grounded, this dream is dying.
But is this desire to plant a flag on space an outdated model of exploration? Victorian explorers took great joy in claiming a new land for their country, but perhaps the more important discoveries are not made by setting foot on fresh ground, but in achieving new levels in human understanding. Our resources might be better used answering what is human consciousness, and what is going on deep inside the Earth.
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