It's difficult to choose a favourite mission from all the missions NASA have undertaken over the years. The most audacious must have been landing a man on the moon. The most inspiring is probably the Voyager and Pioneer missions.
What surprised me is how many missions are still current.
However, the one that grabbed my attention when I was old enough to understand what all the fuss was about, was the Space Shuttle mission (April 12, 1981). I recall taking time out of my holiday as a school kid and watching the first launch of Columbia thinking this is the most important development in space exploration and is the future of space technology.
So I was a little sad to see it come to an end. Nasa: "The final space shuttle mission, STS-135, ended July 21, 2011 when Atlantis rolled to a stop at its home port, NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida."
It was a programme filled with triumphs and tragedies.
Simplistically: We put men on the moon with slide rules, the shuttle was launched on DOS - there will be no future missions because of Windows. Commander: Houston we have a problem, Windows: would you like to try our new virus scan now, Houston: can you guys reboot your computer? Commander: O2 levels at 9% & dropping, we won't get through the reboot sequence before the O2 has run out. Houston: Sorry Commander, we have to run diagnostics and refrag our disks first. Do one of you have a spare slide rule?
Future missions will probably fly mac's. Next generation ishuttle in Apple green?
