On May 14th, 2010 Space Shuttle Atlantis lifted off for what may be the last time. If you have not yet seen it, head on over to Spacevidcast.com and check out not only the HD launch video, but also the 7 hour pre and post launch event that we produced live on Ustream.tv. And if you're an Spacevidcast epic subscriber you also have access to over 2GB of additional content such as videos, PDFs, mission reports, animations and more!We mentioned a couple weeks ago that STS-132 may not be the final mission for Space Shuttle Atlantis. If Endeavour has problems on what is currently slated to be the final Space Shuttle mission ever, STS-134, and needs to be rescued, Atlantis would be the standby Launch On Need vehicle. That part is set and chances are we won't need to use Atlantis for that rescue mission. However, there is talk of NASA adding one more shuttle flight in the form of STS-135. Since Discovery and Endeavour would have already flown, the next logical choice would be... Atlantis!After the launch of Space Shuttle Atlantis on STS-132 there was a Post-Launch briefing. As soon as the question and answer period came up, talk of STS-135 began. Rather than cut this up, we're going to show you the entire question, answer, followup question and followup answer -- uncut.So lets recap. Right now there is no funding for STS-135 which means no mission. NASA would like to get that sorted out no later than July of this year to see if they can't fly Atlantis one more time in the June 2011 time frame. If Atlantis does fly in June 2011 that means that the Space Shuttle program would then be 30 years old which is not only a great year to end on, but what a great space shuttle to take us out!

Tags: atlantis NASA Science space shuttle spacevidcast sts-132 sts-135