Nasa ended the shuttle program

When the program was retired, the three remaining shuttles were only about a third of the way through their flight lifetimes. It has been made abundantly clear that NASA's budget will remain flat for the foreseeable future. Therefore to do anything beyond shuttle and station, at least one of them had to go.

Station was just beginning to live up to its promise for research, so it was the older shuttle system that went," Adler said. According to Barry, the decision to end the space shuttle program was made easier in the geopolitical context of when the United States and Russia were "good allies" and the cost of using the Soyuz spacecraft was essentially negligible. It wasn't until several years later Russia complained that, in fact, they were getting an unfair deal because they were being forced into providing vehicles that they hadn't budgeted for," Barry said.

So now, it is important that the United States has an independent capability of being able to launch people to space. You helped our country lead the space age and you continue to inspire us each day.

NASA is retiring its space shuttle fleet to make way for a new exploration program aimed at deep space missions. Thousands of NASA and shuttle contractor workers are expected to lose their jobs once the program is no more.

Previously, the agency planned to replace the shuttle program with a new one aimed at returning astronauts to the moon.

But Obama canceled that plan and gave NASA a new directive for deep space exploration , including a crewed asteroid mission by I know they are up to the challenge — and I plan to be around to see it," Obama said.

Obama's comments came just days after he said NASA needs to develop new technologies in order allow faster and longer spaceflights. It was an extraordinary accomplishment and we're very proud of the work that it did. But now what we need is that next technological breakthrough. It will be exhibited near where it and all the other shuttles launched and most landed, at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida.

NASA's first two orbiters to fly, Columbia and Challenger, were lost with their crews to in-flight accidents in February and January respectively. We stand on their shoulders tonight as we celebrate," said Bolden. To mark the retirement of the space shuttle fleet, Johnson Space Center paused during Saturday's event to retire the orbiters' flags, which were deployed outside the center's headquarters building whenever the shuttles were in orbit.

Ellen Ochoa, Johnson's deputy director and a four-time shuttle astronaut, led the flag retirement ceremony, which saw representatives from the shuttle program's primary contractors hand off each flag to a Navy honor guard from nearby Ellington Field. Ochoa paid tribute to each orbiter in the order they first flew as their red, white and blue flags were retired:. NASA retired the space shuttle to devote its resources to sending astronauts beyond low-Earth orbit, to an asteroid, back to the moon and eventually Mars.

In addition to developing a new multi-purpose crew vehicle MPCV designed to take crews outward into the solar system, NASA is soliciting the launch services from four commercially-designed spacecraft to take astronauts to and from the International Space Station. Better known by his stage name "Five for Fighting," singer John Ondrasik played out the evening, performing solo numbers on guitar and piano including "Superman It's Not Easy ," " Years," and "World," which astronauts used as a soundtrack for a video filmed aboard the International Space Station.