Space Shuttle Drag Chute

Atlantis into down processing after MER review notes flawless return

Shuttle Atlantis has been given top marks for her return to Earth via the Mission Evaluation Room (MER) landing report – normally a highly technical, emotionless review into vehicle performance. However, as Atlantis begins down processing for her retirement, her team of engineers and controllers signed off on a report which included numerous notes of pride, best wishes and farewells.

Atlantis brought her crew home safely for one final time, landing on the Shuttle Landing Facility (SLF) runway 15 in the Florida pre-dawn hours , concluding a highly successful mission to provide a bufferzone for the International Space Station (ISS) during the gap between this mission and the start of commercial cargo supplies next year.

She landed – as became typical for the orbiters – with no additional Mission Evaluation Room (MER) items or “funnies”, despite having just bleed off all the massive energy of launch by driving through the atmosphere as a fireball.

“Atlantis has safely returned home following a very successful final mission. For the final time, Florida’s east coast was rocked by the double sonic booms announcing Atlantis’ arrival. Touchdown on runway 15 occurred at 0557:00 EDT with wheel stop at 0557:54 EDT,” noted the NASA Test Director (NTD) report, which is normally highly technical and focused on engineering and flow schedules.

“Atlantis flew a total of 4848 orbits of Earth for a total of 125,935,769 miles and spent 307 days in space. Welcome home Atlantis! Thank you for your service to our country’s Human Spaceflight Program.”

With no weather issues for landing, The Shuttle Flight Control Room (FCR) was polled and provided a go for the deorbit burn.

End of an Era: Last Space Shuttle Comes Home | Hill Country Times

In an almost anticlimactic end to the 30-year-old program, Atlantis and its four astronauts glided to a ghostly landing in near-darkness after one last visit to the International Space Station, completing the 135th and final shuttle flight.

It was a moment of both triumph and melancholy.

“I saw grown men and grown women crying today — tears of joy to be sure,” said launch director Mike Leinbach. “Human emotions came out on the runway today, and you couldn’t suppress them.”

Now the spaceship and the two other surviving shuttles will become museum pieces, like the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo capsules and the Wright brothers’ flying machine before them. NASA astronauts, a dwindling breed, will have to hitch rides to the space station aboard Russian Soyuz capsules for at least three to five years. And thousands more shuttle workers will lose their jobs, beginning with a round of layoffs on Friday.

The spaceship’s return was witnessed at the Kennedy Space Center and Houston’s Johnson Space Center by a relatively small crowd, mostly of NASA family and friends, compared with the 1 million who watched Atlantis lift off on July 8.

In Houston, flight director Tony Ceccacci, who presided over Atlantis’ safe return, choked up while signing off from Mission Control for the final time.

“The work done in this room, in this building, will never again be duplicated,” he told his team before the doors opened and the center filled with dozens of past and present flight controllers.

Shuttle commander Christopher Ferguson and his crew seized every opportunity to thank the thousands of workers who got them safely to and from orbit and guided them through the 13-day flight.

“After serving the world for over 30 years, the space shuttle’s earned its place in history. And it’s come to a final stop,” he radioed after Atlantis touched down just before dawn.

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