The final flight crew of Atlantis reunite to reminisce and look forward
Rachael Nail
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On Thursday, nearly the full crew of space shuttle Atlantis’ final flight reunited at Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex to reminisce and share stories with the public about their experiences.
“It’s a special day for all of us, it’s just awesome to be back one more time to say hello and to pay tribute,” said Chris Ferguson, commander of Atlantis’ final flight.
The iconic spacecraft last launched from Kennedy Space Center on July 8, 2011, and returned 13 days later carrying a crew of four astronauts: Commander Chris Ferguson, Pilot Doug Hurley, and Mission Specialists Sandy Magnus and Rex Walheim.
Sitting under the massive spacecraft, Ferguson, Magnus and Walheim reminisced about their time in space.
“I will never forget my first opportunity to look up at the space station when we were about 600 feet away,” Ferguson recalled. “It’s so big the windows aren’t big enough to contain it. You have to move your head all around to see the whole thing. You just think to yourself, ‘Wow, I’m here. I’m in this really cool spaceship.'”
Walheim flew on Atlantis three times and something he will never forget is how the bathroom door on shuttle would swing open and slam against the ladder whenever they were doing the de-orbit burn to land.
“I kept thinking I oughta warn people about this. Unfortunately I didn’t tell Ferguson and Doug there’s gonna be a huge bang when you’re trying to fly this and sure enough it swung and I said, ‘Don’t worry, don’t worry, it’s just the bathroom door.’”
Magnus’ strongest memory was more bittersweet.
“I remember when we landed on that last mission, Doug, Rex and I kind of looked at each other on the flight deck and nobody wanted to move. We were the last ones to ever be in the vehicle,” she said.
This week marked more than the final space shuttle flight. The last Atlantis mission was also the end of an era when NASA built its own spacecraft.
“I remember we came back when they rolled Atlantis out of the orbiter processing building and it was five or six months after the final flight,” recalled Ferguson, “and I was just amazed at how quiet Kennedy Space Center was -- it wasn’t a ghost town, but there were no cars around. I almost felt sad in a little way.”
During that period of uncertainty, thousands of workers on the Space Coast lost their jobs and wondered what would be next.
“Really what was happening is they were the ashes and the Phoenix was rising someplace. It took five years but over a period of time more cars showed up in the parking lot, more customers showed up,” Ferguson said.
In the 10 years since, private space companies have flourished with NASA’s help. NASA no longer owns and operates a spacecraft capable of carrying astronauts to the International Space Station. Now NASA is a customer and pays SpaceX and Boeing to do that job.
SpaceX has already flown three missions to the space station using its Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsules. Boeing is building the Starliner spacecraft and will do a second uncrewed test at the end of the month. The first one ran into software issues last year, causing the spacecraft to miss the docking with the space station.
Ferguson, who has worked for Boeing since 2011, was set to command the first crewed Starliner flight but pulled out for personal reasons. Since then, he has been working behind the scenes to prepare his replacement: NASA astronaut Barry “Butch” Wilmore.
Ferguson now works five miles away in one of the old space shuttle processing facilities. He says all the changes have been challenging but are ultimately good.
“Before, this was just the launch facility and I don’t mean to demean that but now we’re building the rockets here and we’re building the satellites here so I think in a lot of ways, this is better.”
Contact Rachael Joy at 321-242-3577. Follow her on Twitter @Rachael_Joy.