What it was like to watch the last shuttle fly home—from space

As Mike Fossum floated inside the International Space Station with camera in hand, one thought kept coming back to him: Don’t screw this up. Two days earlier, he had said goodbye to the crew of Space Shuttle Atlantis. And not just any crew—the final crew. Chris Ferguson, Doug Hurley, Sandy Magnus, and Rex Walheim had all left and were strapped into their seats in preparation to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere. They would make a rare nighttime landing, offering Fossum an unparalleled opportunity to photograph the last shuttle to ever fly home.

If he didn’t screw it up.

Before living aboard the station, Fossum had flown twice on Discovery, in 2006 and 2008. He wanted to honor the shuttle and its final crew on July 21, 2011, when the Atlantis orbiter would blaze one last plasma trail through the atmosphere.