Early this morning, just before dawn at 5:57 AM, the Space Shuttle Atlantis landed at Cape Canaveral, Florida. The landing was the final one for the Space Shuttle program, and with it, the American manned space program comes to a temporary end.
CNN and MSNBC carried it during their early-morning programs at that hour, whole “Fox & Friends” started an hour early to cover the event.
On the East Coast, many local affiliates carried the landing live during their morning shows. On the West Coast ABC, NBC and Fox ran special reports anchored by Josh Elliott, Natalie Morales and Jon Scott, respectively.
American astronauts will still travel to and from the International Space Station on Russian Soyuz spacecraft, and there is a good chance that private spacecraft capable of carrying humans becomes viable in the next decade.
Watch the final landing, after the jump.