Shuttle crew say fond farewell to space station for final time

The crew of the last space shuttle has floated out of the International Space Station for the final time.

Before disappearing into Atlantis yesterday morning, commander Christopher Ferguson presented a pair of commemorative items to the space station crew.

He first handed over a model of the space shuttle.

He said he wished he could have brought up a monument to mark the end of the 30-year shuttle programme, but it would not fit.

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Then the skipper gave the station residents a small US flag that flew aboard Columbia on the very first shuttle mission in 1981.

The flag will return to Earth when Americans are launched again from US soil, aboard commercially developed craft.

Atlantis will undock early today and is due to land early on Thursday.

As the hatches swung shut behind the four crew members of Atlantis, it closed “a chapter in the history of our nation”, space station astronaut Ronald Garan Jr noted during yesterday’s farewell ceremony.

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He attached the small flag to the door of the space station hatch before the shuttle astronauts departed. Atlantis has been docked at the space station for over a week, unloading a year’s worth of supplies and packing up rubbish and old equipment for the trip home.

It was a heartfelt goodbye for the two crews, numbering 10 astronauts in all from three countries. They embraced one another and Sandra Magnus wiped away tears.

Ferguson said: “We brought the best monument we could possibly find, and that’s a space shuttle model.”

The model, signed by senior shuttle managers and flight directors, was also hung near the hatch.

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“What you don’t see are the signatures of the tens of thousands who rose to orbit with us over the past 30 years, if only in spirit,” Ferguson added.

Space station astronaut Michael Fossum accepted the model “as one of the greatest testaments to the shuttle’s incredible capability”.

Almost all of Nasa’s space shuttle flights since 1998 were devoted to building and maintaining the space station – in all, 37 missions.

“Ninety per cent of the world’s population can look out of their backyards at night and see us going overhead,” Fossum added.

Emotions also welled up at Mission Control.

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Lead flight director Kwatsi Alibaruho has one more shift before signing off forever from shuttle Mission Control in Houston.

He said he and his team vacillate “between intense pride at how well this mission has gone and sometimes being somewhat freaked out, for lack of a more technical term”.

Whenever he pauses to think about the finality of it all, “I get kind of freaked out and have this sinking feeling in my stomach that lasts about five or 10 seconds, and then I go back to doing an impersonation of a steely eyed missile man”, he said.

Atlantis will pull away from the space station early today. As a final salute, the space station will rotate 90 degrees to provide a new angle for pictures.

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It will be some time before there are so many people aboard the space station again.

The Russian Soyuz capsules – the only way to get astronauts to the space station for at least the next few years – carry no more than three crew.

New commercial spacecraft under development for astronauts are three to five years away from flying.

The first private spacecraft to reach the space station will retrieve the flag left behind.

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It will fly again on the massive rocket that Nasa plans to build to send astronauts out of low-Earth orbit, Ferguson said. “Perhaps to a lunar destination, perhaps to Mars,” he said.

Atlantis will remain at Kennedy Space Centre for retirement, going on public display. Discovery and Endeavour will be transported to museums in suburban Washington and Los Angeles.