With space shuttle home, an era ends

Associated Press

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.

The space shuttle passed into history Thursday, the words “wheels stop” crackling over the cockpit radio for the very last time.

In an almost anticlimactic end to the 30-year-old program, Atlantis and its four astronauts glided to a ghostly landing in near-darkness after one last visit to the International Space Station, completing the 135th and final shuttle flight.

It was a moment of both triumph and melancholy.

“I saw grown men and grown women crying today — tears of joy to be sure,” said launch director Mike Leinbach. “Human emotions came out on the runway today, and you couldn’t suppress them.”

Now the spaceship and the two other surviving shuttles will become museum pieces, like the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo capsules and the Wright brothers’ flying machine before them. NASA astronauts will have to hitch rides to the space station aboard Russian Soyuz capsules for at least three to five years. And thousands more shuttle workers will lose their jobs, beginning with a round of layoffs today.