NASA spacecraft Atlantis landed successfully on runway 15 of the shuttle landing facility at Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 5:57 am EDT. The landing marks the end of the space shuttle program.
Atlantis, which flew its maiden voyage on October 3, 1985 on the STS-51-J mission, carried a crew of four for its STS-135 mission: Commander Chris Ferguson, Pilot Doug Hurley, and Mission Specialists Sandy Magnus and Rex Walheim.
The shuttle delivered to the International Space Station the Robotic Refueling Mission (RRM), which is an experiment designed to demonstrate and test the tools, technologies and techniques needed to robotically refuel satellites in space, even satellites not designed to be serviced.
The mission also flew the Raffaello multi-purpose logistics module filled with supplies and spare parts to sustain the station's operations once the shuttles are retired, during STS-135, which is the last planned space shuttle mission since STS-1.