As the United States prepares to end its space shuttle program, technologies developed to nurture the reusable spaceships through three decades of flight will live on in day-to-day use on Earth.
Shuttle Atlantis and its four-member crew are due back at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 5:57am EDT on Thursday (9:57pm in New Zealand) after a mission to resupply the International Space Station, a US$100 billion ($116.82 billion) project of 16 nations, currently orbiting about 250 miles (402.3 kilometres) above the planet.
NASA points to the station, finished this year after 12 years of assembly by shuttle crews, as the program's crowning achievement, but it is far from the only one.
"Space shuttle has provided unbelievable benefit and return on the investment of the American taxpayer," said NASA deputy administrator Lori Garver.
That investment, including development and operational costs over the past 40 years, tallies about US$200 billion ($233.64 billion), according to a recent University of Colorado study.
The shuttle program also took a toll in human life, with 14 astronauts killed in two separate accidents.
In addition to carrying 180 satellites into orbit - myriad probes from the grandiose Hubble Space Telescope to the tiny PicoSat solar cell test-bed released by the Atlantis astronauts Wednesday - the shuttle program spawned more than 100 spinoff technologies for medical, industrial and other terrestrial uses.
Technology used in space shuttle fuel pumps, for example, led to the development of a miniature heart pump weighing less than 4 ounces (113 grams). Shuttle wiring problems discovered in 1999 triggered a new self-healing insulation repair technology, which is being commercialised with Federal Aviation Administration funding.
Ford Motor Co used a system originally developed to detect shuttle hydrogen gas leaks to produce a car-powered by natural gas.
Just building the shuttles in the 1970s revolutionised aircraft, which previously used manual, rather than "fly by wire" electronic flight control systems that are prevalent today. Similar technology has since been widely adopted by the automotive industry for "drive by wire" systems. read more
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