The final flight in the US space shuttle programme left Cape Canaveral in Florida amid concerns that cloudy conditions would delay the shuttle’s mission to re-supply the international space station.
As it turned out, the countdown clock was stopped at 31 seconds because of a technical problem but it resumed soon after and the shuttle roared into the sky watched by up to a million people lining beaches and causeways around the launch pad.
Historic 30 year programme
Over the past three decades, the agency’s shuttles have played a crucial role in constructing the International Space Station (ISS), launching the Hubble telescope and sending astronauts and millions of tons of hardware into space.
Since Columbia’s maiden launch in April 1981, the five shuttles – Atlantis, Columbia, Challenger, Discovery and Endeavour – have completed 134 flights between them, and travelled a combined total of 537,114,016 miles (864,401,218km), spending 1,320 days in orbit.
Discovery completed its final mission in March, Endeavour launched for the last time in April, and Atlantis will be the programme’s swan song.