{"id":122,"date":"2011-07-22T07:50:07","date_gmt":"2011-07-22T07:50:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/indigenus\/2011\/07\/shuttle-shuts-shop.html"},"modified":"2011-07-22T07:50:07","modified_gmt":"2011-07-22T07:50:07","slug":"shuttle_shuts_shop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/indigenus\/2011\/07\/shuttle_shuts_shop.html","title":{"rendered":"Shuttle shuts shop"},"content":{"rendered":"

India’s GSAT<\/span>-12 Communication Satellite, launched onboard Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV<\/span>-C17), perched itself successfully in the geosynchronous orbit this week. On the other side of the globe, curtains came down on NASA’s three decade long space shuttle programme.<\/p>\n

Here’s a lovely video made by colleagues at Nature Videos marking the end of NASA’s shuttle programme with the return of Atlantis to Earth: Space Shuttle: The complete missions <\/a>.<\/p>\n

The video is a journey of NASA’s incredible reusable space transportation system that sent five shuttles — Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour — with 355 men and women into space. It has endearing visuals of their triumphs and losses, the rigours of a space mission and the techonological prowess involved in such programmes.<\/p>\n

American President Ronald Reagan’s historic words after the crash of Challenger in January 1986 seem prophetic on hindsight as the shuttle programme’s dream run comes to an end: “The future doesn’t belong to the faint hearted, it belongs to the brave.”<\/p>\n

You might also want to read this Nature Network blog <\/a>interviewing Charlotte Stoddart of the Nature Video team on the making of the video. There’s also a Nature<\/a> special talking about the end of the space shuttle programme and the uncertain future of the human space flight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

India\u2019s GSAT-12 Communication Satellite, launched onboard Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C17), perched itself successfully in the geosynchronous orbit this week. On the other side of the globe, curtains came down on NASA\u2019s three decade long space shuttle programme.  Read more<\/a> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":105,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-astrophysics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/indigenus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/indigenus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/indigenus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/indigenus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/105"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/indigenus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=122"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/indigenus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/indigenus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/indigenus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/indigenus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}