Atlantis - The ship spans two centuries

Yesterday (July 21), Space Shuttle Atlantis returned to Earth safely, closing the space mission through two centuries, leaving behind a period of pride of NASA in particular and the United States in general.

>>>The Atlantis shuttle has flown into space successfully
>>> The shuttle Atlantis has left the ISS station to go home

Atlantis is the name of a continent whose existence still exists before a big question mark. However, the retiring space shuttle of the US Space Agency (NASA) was named after the RV Atlantis . This is the first and key research ship of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Massachusetts, USA.

Atlantis was built by Rockwell International in Southern California and brought to John F. Kennedy Space Center in eastern Florida in April 1985. This is the only orbit shuttle that cannot afford to take energy from the International Space Station (ISS) when connected to this station, which continues to power itself from fuel cells.

The Atlantis space shuttle is about to fly into the air with a rocket in the mission of STS-132 on May 14, 2010. Photo: NASA

Rockwell International took five years to design and build parts of the Atlantis space shuttle, before completing the complete assembly of the ship on April 10, 1984. More than a year and a half later, on October 3, 1985, Atlantis made the first flight into space with the mission of being named STS-51-J (STS stands for Space Transportation System, meaning System Transportation System).

After 23 years of continuous use of Atlantis in space missions, NASA began to consider having this space shuttle retire in 2008. However, this plan had to be reversed when other shuttles were Discovery. and Endeavor in turn stopped flying in March and June this year, in the plan to end the US 30-year shuttle program.

>> Video of Atlantis's last flight

After delays, Atlantis finally had a historic flight on July 8, a flight that was also delayed nearly two and a half minutes from the scheduled time. Americans are developing a pointy nose shuttle project called Orion to target further targets in the universe, which might be Mars first. But not so that Atlantis and the space shuttle were forgotten.

The resounding mission

If the Atlantis sailing boat made a total of more than 2 million kilometers traveling across the oceans and is the oldest oceanographic research boat in the world, the Atlantis space shuttle is no different from those of the It was resounding for 26 years.

In June 2007 , Atlantis made the longest mission since its inception until now. In this mission called STS-117 , the crew brought some new equipment to the International Space Station and made four walks to space outside the ship.

Nearly two years later, in May 2009 , Atlantis brought seven astronauts to the Hubble Space Telescope in a mission called STS-125 . This mission succeeds when the crew completes five space travel times in total up to 37 hours, to install new cameras, batteries, a gyroscope and other components. the famous telescope.

NASA Boeing 747 is bringing Atlantis back to John F. Kennedy Space Center in Florida state on July 1, 2007. Photo: NASA

Of the five space shuttle used by NASA, Atlantis set a record for the shortest distance between two flights in 1985. At that time, the shuttle performed STS-61-B on November 26. / 1985, ie only 50 days after the first flight mentioned above.

On November 16, 2009, in an interview after the flight to carry out the STS-129 task of Atlantis, the director in charge of spacecraft launch at John F. Kennedy Space Center, Mr. Mike Leinbach said this shuttle has officially defeated the Discorey ship in reports of incidents. Atlantis has only 54 recorded errors between two consecutive flights to carry out the STS-125 and STS-129 missions, a record low for US shuttles.

But Atlantis did even better. After the flight on May 14, 2010, Atlantis was confirmed to meet only 46 errors from the previous flight with the mission of STS-129, which means the shuttle has broken its own record. When NASA's Spaceship Program ended, this record never ended up being dumped.

>> Video of Atlantis ship off the ISS station

Talking numbers

The astronauts participated in the last flight of Atlantis space shuttle.Photo: NASA

200 million: As of the end of the 32nd flight with the STS-132 mission , Atlantis flew 4,648 times the Earth's orbit and traveled up to nearly 200 million km in space, or 500 times more. times distance from the earth to the moon.

28.160: Altantis can reach speeds of 28,160 km / h, meaning that this shuttle can fly all around the earth's equator for an hour and a half.

293: Also taking into account STS-132, Atlantis is in the space of 293 days, 18 hours, 29 minutes and 37 seconds.

155: A total of 155 astronauts participated in the Atlantis 32 flights until before the final flight on July 8.