KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. -- Smoke swirls up from Runway 15 as Space Shuttle Atlantis’ wheels touch down, completing the 9-day, 20-hour, 9-minute-long STS-101 mission. At the controls are Commander James D. Halsell Jr. and Pilot Scott “Doc” Horowitz. Also onboard the orbiter are Mission Specialists Mary Ellen Weber, James S. Voss, Jeffrey N. Williams, Susan J. Helms and Yury Usachev of Russia. The crew is returning from the third flight to the International Space Station. This was the 98th flight in the Space Shuttle program and the 21st for Atlantis, also marking the 51st landing at KSC, the 22nd consecutive landing at KSC, the 14th nighttime landing in Shuttle history and the 29th in the last 30 Shuttle flights. Main gear touchdown was at 2:20:17 a.m. EDT May 29 , landing on orbit 155 of the mission. Nose gear touchdown was at 2:20:30 a.m. EDT, and wheel stop at 2:21:19 a.m. EDT KSC-00pp0677
Summary
KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. -- Smoke swirls up from Runway 15 as Space Shuttle Atlantis’ wheels touch down, completing the 9-day, 20-hour, 9-minute-long STS-101 mission. At the controls are Commander James D. Halsell Jr. and Pilot Scott “Doc” Horowitz. Also onboard the orbiter are Mission Specialists Mary Ellen Weber, James S. Voss, Jeffrey N. Williams, Susan J. Helms and Yury Usachev of Russia. The crew is returning from the third flight to the International Space Station. This was the 98th flight in the Space Shuttle program and the 21st for Atlantis, also marking the 51st landing at KSC, the 22nd consecutive landing at KSC, the 14th nighttime landing in Shuttle history and the 29th in the last 30 Shuttle flights. Main gear touchdown was at 2:20:17 a.m. EDT May 29 , landing on orbit 155 of the mission. Nose gear touchdown was at 2:20:30 a.m. EDT, and wheel stop at 2:21:19 a.m. EDT
The Space Shuttle program was the United States government's manned launch vehicle program from 1981 to 2011, administered by NASA and officially beginning in 1972. The Space Shuttle system—composed of an orbiter launched with two reusable solid rocket boosters and a disposable external fuel tank— carried up to eight astronauts and up to 50,000 lb (23,000 kg) of payload into low Earth orbit (LEO). When its mission was complete, the orbiter would re-enter the Earth's atmosphere and lands as a glider. Although the concept had been explored since the late 1960s, the program formally commenced in 1972 and was the focus of NASA's manned operations after the final Apollo and Skylab flights in the mid-1970s. It started with the launch of the first shuttle Columbia on April 12, 1981, on STS-1. and finished with its last mission, STS-135 flown by Atlantis, in July 2011.