On July 8 2011, NASA launched their final space shuttle mission, STS 135. And I once launched my Face Into Space. But this time, Sean went with me on the mission.
I had sent my picture with the previous mission, STS 134 in May And had missed out NASA’s first Face in Space launch in February because I didn’t know about it. But this was an opportunity Sean and I couldn’t pass up. This would be NASA’s final voyage and we wanted to be a part of history, however small. Sniff.
The 135th and final space shuttle flight launched on July 8, 2011. Atlantis carried the Raffaello multipurpose logistics module to deliver supplies, logistics and spare parts to the International Space Station. The mission also flew a system to investigate the potential for robotically refueling existing spacecraft and returned a failed ammonia pump module to help NASA better understand the failure mechanism and improve pump designs for future systems.
Atlantis’ crew consisted of Commander Chris Ferguson, Pilot Doug Hurley and Mission Specialists Sandy Magnus and Rex Walheim.
Sean and I were 2 out of 9,841 Canadians, and 2 out of 367,627 worldwide participants who took part in NASA’s 3 Face in Space program. What a club to be in.
On July 21 space shuttle Atlantis touched down for the final time on runway 15 at Kennedy Space Centre’s shuttle landing facility in Florida. The time was 5:57am.
“Having fired the imagination of a generation, a ship like no other, its place in history secured, the space shuttle pulls into port for the last time. Its voyage at an end.”
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