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Highlights of the U.S. Space Program
The space shuttle Atlantis marks the 135th and final space shuttle launch for NASA.
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July 1969: Astronaut Buzz Aldrin walks on the surface of the Moon near the leg of the Lunar Module (LM) "Eagle" during the Apollo 11 extravehicular activity (EVA). Astronaut Neil Armstrong, commander, took this photograph with a 70mm lunar surface camera.
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1974: NASA�s first space station, Skylab, was almost an immediate failure. The first crew, led by Pete Conrad, saved the mission by installing a sunshade to replace a meteoroid/sun shield that had torn off during launch.
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1975: Astronauts Thomas P. Stafford (left) and Donald K. "Deke" Slayton hold containers of Soviet space food in the Soyuz Orbital Module during the joint U.S.-USSR Apollo-Soyuz Test Project docking in Earth orbit mission. The containers hold borsch (beet
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1981: The April 12 launch at Pad 39A of STS-1 carries astronauts John Young and Robert Crippen into an Earth orbital mission scheduled to last for 54 hours, ending with unpowered landing at Edwards Air Force Base in California.