STS-104 Post-Flight Presentation

Relive the final space shuttle mission with this slow-motion film footage of Atlantis’ launch from the Kennedy Space Center on July 7, 2011. (Membership Required)

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.

The last space shuttle external tank in existence, headed from the New Orleans manufacturing plant to the California Science Center for the vertical launch pad display of the retired orbiter Endeavour, has passed through the Panama Canal.