Shuttle Atlantis is currently preparing for a possible July launch \u2013 for STS 121, the second of the Return to Flight missions this year. <\/p>\n
Also in preparation for the potential rescue mission STS-300, Atlantis will be used as a standby vehicle should a critical failure occur during Discovery\u2019s STS-114 Return to Flight. If this is indeed the case, a successfull rescue plan would see Atlantis return to Earth ferrying an unprecedented eleven people, carrying on board the crew of Discovery as well as her own.\n<\/p>\n
Atlantis (OV-104), is NASA\u2019s fourth space-rated Space Shuttle Orbiter and was created in half the time it took to create her elder sister ship Columbia. This was mainly due to the use of large thermal protection blankets on the upper body of Atlantis, as opposed to the individual tiles embedded into Columbia.<\/font> <\/font> Atlantis was transported to NASA\u2019s Kennedy Space Center in April 1985 for her first space flight STS-51-J. She was launched on October 3rd 1985 and carried \u2013 on her maiden voyage \u2013 a classified payload for the U.S. Department of Defense. The vehicle went on to carry four more DOD payloads on later missions.<\/font> <\/font> Other milestones include Atlantis serving as the on-orbit launch site for many noteworthy spacecraft, including the planetary probes Magellan and Galileo, as well as the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory. Many on board science experiments took place during most missions to further enhance space research in low Earth orbit.<\/font> <\/font> Atlantis also pioneered the Shuttle-Mir missions starting with STS-71, flying the first seven missions to link up with the Russian Space Station. On STS-79, the fourth of Atlantis\u2019 docking missions, the Shuttle carried astronaut Shannon Lucid back to Earth after spending a record 188 days in orbit aboard Mir.<\/font> <\/font> In recent years, Atlantis has delivered several vital pieces of equipment to the International Space Station, including the U.S. Laboratory module, Destiny, as well as the Joint Airlock Quest and multiple sections of the Integrated Truss structure that makes up the Station\u2019s backbone. <\/font> <\/font> <\/font> Construction Milestones: <\/font> <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Shuttle Atlantis is currently preparing for a possible July launch \u2013 for STS 121, the second of the Return to Flight missions this year. Also in preparation for the potential rescue mission STS-300, Atlantis will be used as a standby vehicle should a critical failure occur during Discovery\u2019s STS-114 Return to Flight. If this is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42418"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42418"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42418\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n\n
\n Jan. 29, 1979<\/font><\/td>\n Contract Award<\/font><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n March 30, 1980<\/font><\/td>\n Start structural assembly of crew module<\/font><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Nov. 23, 1981<\/font><\/td>\n Start structural assembly of aft-fuselage<\/font><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n June 13, 1983<\/font><\/td>\n Wings arrive at Palmdale from Grumman<\/font><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Dec. 2, 1983<\/font><\/td>\n Start of Final Assembly<\/font><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n April 10, 1984<\/font><\/td>\n Completed final assembly<\/font><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n March 6, 1985<\/font><\/td>\n Rollout from Palmdale<\/font><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n April 3, 1985<\/font><\/td>\n Overland transport from Palmdale to Edwards<\/font><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n April 9, 1985<\/font><\/td>\n Delivery to Kennedy Space Center<\/font><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Sept. 5, 1985<\/font><\/td>\n Flight Readiness Firing<\/font><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Oct. 3, 1985<\/font><\/td>\n First Flight (STS-51-J)<\/font><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n
<\/font> <\/font> Upgrades and Features:<\/font> <\/font> By early 2005, Atlantis had undergone two overhauls known as Orbiter Maintenance Down Periods. Some of the most significant upgrades and new features included: <\/font> <\/p>\n\n