On the Fourth of July, the four STS-135 crew members arrived in two T-38 jets at NASA Kennedy Space Center's Shuttle Landing Facility at approximately 2:30 p.m. EDT. Commander Chris Ferguson, Pilot Doug Hurley and Mission Specialists Sandy Magnus and Rex Walheim spoke to media before being transported to the Astronaut Crew Quarters in Kennedy's Operations and Checkout Building, where they will spend the next few days training and spend time with family before liftoff.

"I think I speak for the whole crew in that we are delighted to be here after a very arduous nine month training flow and we're thrilled to finally be here in Florida for launch week," said Ferguson.

Launch of space shuttle Atlantis is scheduled for Friday, July 8, at 11:26 a.m.

Major moments in the US shuttle program
The US space shuttle is part cargo truck, part passenger bus, part airplane built for orbit, and has known soaring highs and devastating lows during its 30-year career in spaceflight.

The shuttle program was born in 1972 with the decision by president Richard Nixon to launch the program, which would become the major focus of US human spaceflight ambitions over the next four decades.

A prototype called Enterprise was built for test flights but never reached space. Columbia became the first shuttle to fly in orbit with its launch on April 12, 1981 with two astronauts on board.

Five years into the program, which mainly focused on deploying satellites into orbit and conducting experiments in space, disaster struck when the Challenger exploded 73 seconds after liftoff on January 28, 1986.

The blast was seen on live television by countless Americans including millions of school children who tuned in to watch the shuttle lift off carrying teacher Christa McAuliffe, 37, who planned to be the first to give lessons from space.

McAuliffe and the other six crew on board perished, and the shuttle program was grounded for nearly three years. The cause of the problem was linked to a faulty seal on one of the rocket boosters.

The shuttle program launched its first return-to-flight mission in September 1988 with Discovery, the same orbiter that in 1990 would deploy the Hubble Space Telescope, which has revolutionized the world's knowledge of astronomy.

The Hubble mission was piloted by Charles Bolden, who today is NASA's chief administrator and the first African-American to hold the US space agency's top post.

In 1993, the shuttle Endeavour and its crew of seven embarked on a mid-orbit repair mission to clear up a problem with the telescope's main mirror, and in early 1994 the first sharp images from Hubble were released.

Four more maintenance missions have been performed on subsequent shuttle flights, the latest being in 2009.

The start of a Russian-American partnership in space was signed by president George H. W. Bush and Russian president Boris Yeltsin, so that Russian cosmonauts would fly on US shuttles and US astronauts would spend time working aboard the Russian Mir Space Station.

Mir, an orbiting laboratory that was the world's largest until it was replaced by the International Space Station, was operational from 1986 to 2001.

Discovery's flight in February 1995 marked the first Russian-US mission. The orbiter carried a Russian cosmonaut and performed the first flyaround of the station by a US shuttle in preparation for the first mission to Mir by Atlantis four months later.

Atlantis brought five Russians and one American on its trip to Mir in June-July 1995. A total of nine shuttle missions eventually docked at the Russian space lab, bringing supplies and equipment.

The most important mission for the space shuttle came with the start of construction on the International Space Station in 1998.

The first unit, the Zarya module, was sent up by Russia in November 1998. The space shuttle Endeavour launched one month later and mated the Unity nodule with the Zarya, marking the start of a more than decade-long construction process.

Twenty-five shuttle flights have helped assemble the space outpost, a project that involves 16 nations - including Russia, Canada, Japan, several European countries and the United States - and has cost 100 billion dollars to build.

Nearly two decades after the Challenger explosion, just as shuttle flights were seeming routine again, a new catastrophe shocked NASA when the shuttle Columbia disintegrated moments before landing in 2003.

Columbia's seven astronauts died a fiery death when the shuttle broke apart during its return to the Earth's atmosphere due to damage caused by a piece of foam from the external fuel tank that took a chunk out of the orbiter's wing during liftoff.

Again, the shuttle program was grounded for more than two years, as NASA underwent drastic changes aimed at improving the culture and safety of the US space agency.

Discovery led the return to flight in July 2005, and the remaining three shuttle in the flying fleet - Endeavour, Discovery and Atlantis - continued to fly missions to the space station.

Shuttle astronauts have regularly stepped out on spacewalks to help with installation and repairs in orbit. More than 350 people from 16 countries have flown on the shuttle over the years, according to NASA.

Discovery became the first to retire following its mission to the ISS in February-March this year. Endeavour flew its last mission in May-June, and the Atlantis is set to take off for a final time on July 8.

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