Space Shuttle Columbia wind down after STS-118. It was to service the Hubble Space Telescope two more times between 2004 and 2005, but no more missions were planned for it again except for a mission designated STS-144 where it would retrieve the Hubble Space Telescope from orbit and bring it back to Earth. Following the "Columbia" accident, NASA flew the STS-125 mission using "Atlantis", combining the planned fourth and fifth servicing missions into one final mission to Hubble. Because of the retirement of the Space Shuttle fleet, the batteries and gyroscopes that keep the telescope pointed will eventually fail also because of the
Space Shuttle program launched on September 29, 1988. The longest Shuttle mission was STS-80 lasting 17 days, 15 hours. The final flight of the Space Shuttle program was STS-135 on July 8, 2011. Since the Shuttle's retirement in 2011, many of its original duties are performed by an assortment of government and private vessels. The European ATV Automated Transfer Vehicle supplied the ISS between 2008 and 2015. Classified military missions are being flown by the US Air Force's unmanned space plane, the X-37B. By 2012, cargo to the International Space Station was already being delivered commercially under NASA's Commercial Resupply Services by SpaceX's