Atlantis docks on space station
Atlantis docked on the space station Sunday.
July 10th, 2011
12:58 PM ET

Atlantis docks on space station

Atlantis docked with the International Space Station Sunday morning as part of a historic mission marking the final flight of the U.S. shuttle program. Atlantis' four-member crew will deliver supplies and spare parts to the space station, and pick up a broken pump and transport it back to Earth for inspection, NASA said on its website.

The shuttle docked at 11:07 a.m. ET.

The four-member crew blasted off Friday at 11:29 a.m. on what was originally planned to be a 12-day mission, the last in the nation's 30-year shuttle program. NASA will likely try to extend the mission by one day, said Mike Gerstenmaier, the associate administrator.

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Filed under: Atlantis • NASA
soundoff (22 Responses)
  1. ben

    @Big Game James: NASA has created more jobs than any other government agency has. Nearly every single tech. job can be directly attributed to the space program, (for example, computer jobs, anyone working in the satellite business, cd and dvd companies, and the list goes on and on). NASA is about the only government program that has actually caused more revenue through private business than it ever cost. Learn about all the jobs and technology the space program gave us before you so quickly dismiss it.

    July 10, 2011 at 9:26 pm | Report abuse |
  2. ben

    @gung hoe: well played!

    July 10, 2011 at 9:27 pm | Report abuse |
  3. Jerry Gann

    I remember when it all started. It was 1956 or 58 and I was sitting in Social Studies class when the announcement came over our school intercom. The Russians had put a monkey into orbit around our planet. The entire U.S. was in shock that they beat us into outer space. In the early 60's, I was a medical corpsman in the USAF hospital in West Texas. It was around 6:30 AM that I stopped to look at the TV in the day room. Walter Cronkite was on and a rocket was soon to be launched. All we had for news in those days were ABC, CBS or ABC and split screens had not been invented yet. I remember we had a dust storm after that and we blamed it on the rocket launch. When we put a man on the moon, I had to remember a friend of mine in school that every one thought was crazy because he kept saying that one day we would go by rocket to the moon and further beyond, to Mars. Now, he doesn't seem so crazy after all.

    July 11, 2011 at 3:48 am | Report abuse |
  4. RUFFNUTT

    when the space shuttle does it.. it takes 12days to get off..

    July 11, 2011 at 10:04 am | Report abuse |
  5. ben

    @Time Cop: that's only because we've thought on a small scale the last 30 years. The shuttle program set us back a couple of decades because we became satisfied with low orbit space flight, we even lost the desire to go back to the moon(been there done that became our atti tude on going back).

    July 11, 2011 at 12:32 pm | Report abuse |
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