Image above: Space shuttle Atlantis launches July 8, 2011 on the STS-135 mission, the final flight of the Space Shuttle Program.Image credit: NASA âº View larger image.pace shuttle Atlantis completed the program on July 21, 2011, wrapping up the STS-135 mission with a predawn touchdown on the same runway where Columbia first arrived more than 30 years earlier.
Not to be confused with the neighbouring Romanian region of Moldavia. Moldova is a small land-locked country in Eastern Europe, north of the Balkans, surrounded by Romania to the southwest, across the Prut river, and Ukraine to the northeast.
The 1992 cease-fire agreement between Moldova and Transnistria established a Russian peace-keeper presence in Transnistria and a 1,200 member Russian military contingent is present in Transnistria. Russian troops stationed in Moldova proper since the time of the USSR were fully withdrawn to Russia by January 1993.