---
title: "When did the Space Shuttle last fly?"
description: "Atlantis, landing at Kennedy Space Center on STS-135, 21 July 2011. What happened, why it has not happened since, and whether it plausibly could again."
url: https://atoneplace.net/the-last-time/space-shuttle/
site: "At One Place"
---

# When did the Space Shuttle last fly?

**When did the Space Shuttle last fly?: 21 July 2011**

Atlantis, landing at Kennedy Space Center on STS-135

The programme ran for thirty years and 135 missions, two of which killed their crews. After Atlantis landed, the United States had no way of launching a person into orbit and bought seats on Russian Soyuz flights for nine years, until SpaceX's Crew Dragon flew in 2020.

- **What:** Atlantis, landing at Kennedy Space Center on STS-135
- **When:** 21 July 2011
- **Category:** Space
- **Could this change?:** Not in any foreseeable way. The event is closed.

## Space

| Question | When |
| --- | --- |
| When was Halley's Comet last visible? | 9 February 1986 |
| When did a human last walk on the Moon? | 14 December 1972 |

> This page gives a date and never a "years ago". These pages are built as static files, so a computed interval would freeze at build time and quietly become wrong — which on a reference site is worse than making the reader do the subtraction.

## Common questions

### When did the Space Shuttle last fly?

21 July 2011 — Atlantis, landing at Kennedy Space Center on STS-135.

### What happened?

The programme ran for thirty years and 135 missions, two of which killed their crews. After Atlantis landed, the United States had no way of launching a person into orbit and bought seats on Russian Soyuz flights for nine years, until SpaceX's Crew Dragon flew in 2020.

## Related pages

- [When was Halley's Comet last visible?](https://atoneplace.net/the-last-time/halleys-comet/)
- [When did a human last walk on the Moon?](https://atoneplace.net/the-last-time/human-on-the-moon/)
- [When was the last Boeing 747 delivered?](https://atoneplace.net/the-last-time/boeing-747/)
- [When did Microsoft Office last change its default font?](https://atoneplace.net/the-last-time/office-default-font/)
- [When did the London Underground last gain a line?](https://atoneplace.net/the-last-time/london-underground-line/)
- [When were the SI base units last redefined?](https://atoneplace.net/the-last-time/si-base-units/)
- [When was the last leap second added?](https://atoneplace.net/the-last-time/leap-second/)
- [When was an element last added to the periodic table?](https://atoneplace.net/the-last-time/new-element/)
- [Everything, most recent first](https://atoneplace.net/the-last-time/)

## Sources

- NASA — National Aeronautics and Space Administration (https://www.nasa.gov/) [Public domain (US Government)]