The space shuttle Atlantis, the very last of the orbiters to fly into space, has had a long and epic career of space flight since it was first placed into service in her first mission in October 1985, taking aloft a Department of Defense payload.
STS-30, for example, launched the Magellan probe in May 1989, which made a year-plus voyage to Venus before going into orbit around that planet. The Magellan used radar to map the topography of Venus, creating the first comprehensive maps of the second planet from the sun in history.
STS-34 launched the Galileo probe to Jupiter in October 1989. Despite a broken antenna, the Galileo successfully inserted into orbit around the largest planet in the solar system in December 1995 and provided the first close-up examinations of Jupiter and many of her moons.
STS-37 deployed the Gamma Ray Observatory in April 1991. The Gamma Ray Observatory observed the heavens in the gamma ray spectrum for nine years, making numerous discoveries of gamma ray sources, mostly outside the Milky Way galaxy.
STS-71 launched in June 1995 and performed the first docking with the Russian space station Mir. The mission carried two Russian cosmonauts to Mir and returned American astronaut Norm Thagard and a Russian cosmonaut to Earth. While docked to Mir, a number of joint American/Russian experiments were conducted. Atlantis eventually made seven flights to Mir before that space station was decommissioned and crashed into the Earth's atmosphere.
The space shuttle Atlantis also participated in the construction of the International Space Station. Most notably, STS-98 took the Destiny Module to the ISS complex in February 2001. STS-122 took the European Columbus laboratory to the ISS in February 2008.
STS-125, launched in May 2009, was the final Hubble servicing mission. In the wake of the Columbia disaster, some doubts had arisen that the mission would ever take place due to safety concerns. But the extraordinary decision to prepare the space shuttle Endeavour as a rescue ship was made in order to make the mission possible under NASA safety rules.
STS-135, a space station resupply mission, is the last space shuttle mission ever. It is, as the cliche goes, the end of an era. Atlantis is scheduled to become a permanent exhibit at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor's Complex upon her return to Earth.
Mark R. Whittington is the author of Children of Apollo and The Last Moonwalker. He has written on space subjects for a variety of periodicals, including The Houston Chronicle, The Washington Post, USA Today, the L.A. Times, and The Weekly Standard.
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