Reuters/Cape Canaveral, Fla
The space shuttle Atlantis leaves the Kennedy Space Centre in Cape Canaveral, Florida yesterday, heading towards its new home at the privately operated visitor complex adjacent to the Nasa spaceport
Nasa’s last space shuttle rolled out of a hangar yesterday and travelled down the road to the Kennedy Space Centre Visitor Complex to begin a new life as a museum piece.
Atlantis is the third and final shuttle to be retired and turned over for public display after the end of the 30-year-old shuttle program last year.
“Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because we had it,” shuttle manager Patty Stratton told workers gathered before dawn outside the Kennedy Space Centre’s Vehicle Assembly Building.
The 1960s-era Apollo complex, later used to pair shuttles with booster rockets and fuel tanks for flight, now stands empty. Kennedy Space Centre is in the midst of a transition to support a planned heavy-lift rocket and deep space capsule that can fly astronauts to destinations beyond the International Space Station’s 402km orbit.
Nasa intends to turn over station crew ferry flights to private companies.
For now, Russia has the only transportation system to fly astronauts to the station, a service that costs the US more than $60 mn per seat.
Mounted on top of a 76-wheel flatbed trailer, Atlantis began its final journey before dawn on a clear and cool autumn day at the seaside Florida spaceport.
Several stops were planned along the 16km trek before the spaceship reaches the Visitor Complex around 6 pm EDT (2200 GMT).
Hundreds of current and former employees, including dozens of astronauts, paraded with the shuttle as it slowly made its way beyond the space center’s security gates into the publicly accessible Exploration Park, where about 8,000 people were expected to welcome Atlantis.
“Today marks the end of a phenomenal 30-year program,” said Kennedy Space Center director Robert Cabana, during a ceremony to sign over the shuttle to Delaware North Companies Parks & Resorts, which operates the visitors’ center under a contract with Nasa.
“Atlantis now takes on a mission of inspiration for future generations,” Cabana said.
Between its debut flight in 1985 and the shuttle finale in July 2011, Atlantis racked up more than 306 days in space, including seven missions to the now-defunct Russian space station Mir and 12 flights to the jointly owned international outpost, a $100bn project of 15 nations.