Atlantis space shuttle completed the last flight

Space shuttle Atlantis landed on the earth yesterday after making the last flight in 25 years serving people.

Atlantis landed at Kennedy Space Center on May 26.Photo: AP.

AFP said Atlantis separated from the International Space Station (ISS) on May 23 after transporting 12 tons of goods and equipment to the station. In the process of returning, Atlantis flew over the southern Pacific, Panama and western Cuba before reaching the Kennedy Space Center in the state of Florida, USA. Commander Ken Ham made a perfect landing on the runway at 12:48 GMT.

Yesterday's landing closed the 25-year career of one of the legendary spacecraft of the US Aerospace Agency (NASA).

Discovery and Endeavor - two other NASA spacecraft - will also take the final flight in September and November, respectively, before "retiring."

NASA officials said that in the past 25 years Atlantis has made 32 flights. The total length of the route it flies is 192 million kilometers. In the last flight it spans about 8 million km.

In February this year, US President Barack Obama announced that the government decided to abandon the new generation of spacecraft generation programs to bring people back to the moon. Instead he encouraged private companies to build spacecraft. The head of the White House also proposed a plan to bring people to Mars within the next three years.

After the shuttles stop operating, the United States will have to rely on Russia's Soyuz to bring astronauts to the ISS until a US commercial spacecraft is born. It is expected that new US ships will be built in 2015.