WEBVTT

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(Music)

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George Diller/NASA Public Affairs Officer:  Firing chain is armed. Sound suppression water system activated.

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T minus 10... nine...  eight... seven... six... five... four... three... two... one... zero... and liftoff of

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space shuttle Atlantis on a mission to build, re-supply and to do research

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on the International Space Station.

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Hugh Harris/Former Kennedy Space Center Public Affairs Director: Well, it's always exciting when you're

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getting a new vehicle. And the space shuttle is really unique. It still is the only spacecraft that's ever

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been built by people that takes off, goes into orbit and performs a big job up there,

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and then flies back and lands, and gets ready to go on another mission.

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So it was a very exciting thing to have a new vehicle like Atlantis to launch.

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Angela Brewer/Atlantis Flow Director: I think the most important one, the one that I've been very proud of,

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to be a part of, is the Hubble mission that we did on STS-125. Just the science alone from Hubble is amazing.

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And just to be able to, you know, take all the hardware up and the astronauts up,

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and be a part of the repair effort and the servicing effort was really amazing.

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Michael Good/STS-132 Mission Specialist: Well, it's going to be great to be back on Atlantis.

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I'm very excited about getting another opportunity to fly on board Atlantis. I flew it on my only other

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mission up to the Hubble servicing mission. And then now, to be able to get another ride on Atlantis,

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but up to the space station, it's going to be, it's going to be incredible.

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Angela Brewer/Atlantis Flow Director: I'll be excited as I always am. But I, you know,

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I don't relax until after MECO. You know, it's going to be an emotional day.

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And I think it's going to be bittersweet.

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Michael Good/STS-132 Mission Specialist: It's kind of flying off into the sunset in one respect.

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But we're still doing, you know, important good work.

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We're taking up this Russian module that's actually, its name in Russian means 'dawn.'

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So, in one way we're flying off into the sunset, but we're still, you know,

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doing important work and it's providing more capability to the space station.

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Angela Brewer/Atlantis Flow Director: We love all the shuttles.

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But when you start working exclusively on one, when you're responsible for one,

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you kind of grow attached to your shuttle. One of the things that I get to do when the vehicle

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lands out at Dryden, which it's done a couple times since I've been the flow director,

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is to, I get to ride on the pathfinder back with the vehicle. And stopping over at all the places that we

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stopover, we literally stop traffic on roads. I mean, interstates people pull over

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when they see the shuttle on top of the STA, and just are just in awe.

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They just cannot get enough of it. And that, to me, you know, when people see it,

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sometimes it's out-of-sight, out-of-mind, but when they see it, they are just awestruck.

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Michael Good/STS-132 Mission Specialist: This could be the last flight of Atlantis.

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And so, we're going to do our best to pay tribute to Atlantis not just for this flight,

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but for its whole, you know, all the flights that it's been on and all the things that it's done,

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and all the people that have worked on it.

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Hugh Harris/Former NASA Public Affairs Director: You have to say, you know,

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'what a magnificent vehicle it has been and what a great job that you've done.'