STS-104 Post-Flight Presentation

Awe-inspiring onboard video views of Atlantis’ launch captured from cameras mounted on the solid rocket boosters. Check out these amazing videos of the spacecraft soaring to orbit on the final space shuttle mission.

It was 1986 and the U.S. Air Force was on the cusp of something unprecedented in human spaceflight — launching a space shuttle crew from California and paving the way for people to fly true polar missions.

Thirty years ago Friday, the Hubble Space Telescope was launched aboard the shuttle Discovery with a famously flawed mirror, the opening chapter in an improbable saga of redemption and scientific discovery that revolutionized humanity’s view of the cosmos with jaw-dropping images now familiar to millions.