The Space Shuttle Atlantis glides down towards the runway at the Kennedy Space Center, the 135th and final Space Shuttle mission.

Thirty years on from it’s first orbital test flight, much can be said about the shuttle program, and much has been learned from not only its successes but from its tragic failures.

Upon completing one of it’s final few tasks, the release of a small PicoSat, STS-135 Flight Engineer Rex Walheim offered a poem in tribute - check out a video of the event and listen to the full poem for yourselves.

One more satellite takes its place in the sky,
The last of many that the shuttle let fly.
Magellen, Galileo, Hubble and more
have sailed beyond her payload bay doors.
They’ve filled science books and still more to come.
The shuttle’s legacy will live on when her flying is done.

Excerpt of Rex Walheim’s poem, after the 180th deployment of a payload from the space shuttle

As one door closes, another door opens. We wait and wonder for where that next door will lead…