I’m sure everyone has heard by now that space shuttle Atlantis returned safely to Earth this morning, concluding her 32nd — and final — mission. The old girl isn’t quite ready for mothballs yet; she will be prepped again as per the usual turnaround routine to serve as the “launch-on-need” vehicle — that’d be a “back-up” to you and me — for Endeavour‘s final flight in November, which will be the last of the shuttle program. Barring any problems with Endeavour, however, Atlantis is effectively finished. I won’t reiterate again how sad this makes me. Instead, let’s just paste a couple of souvenirs into our online scrapbook, and enjoy the memories while they’re still fresh.

First up, Twittering astronaut Soichi Noguchi captured a really gorgeous portrait of Atlantis as she pulled away from the International Space Station a couple days ago; click on the thumbnail below to see the full-size version:

And here is NASA’s official video coverage of the landing. This is what the future looked like when I was a kid, and even though I know a lot of people now see this as the past — the 1970s, to be precise — I never get tired of seeing it. For a vehicle that was once derisively referred to as “the flying brick,” the shuttle always strikes me as incredibly graceful in the air and surprisingly delicate when it touches down.

The next scheduled launch will be Discovery in mid-September…