STS-135 and Expedition 28 Farewell Ceremony

S135-E-009414 (18 July 2011) --- At the farewell ceremony before the shuttle crew returned to Atlantis, NASA astronaut Chris Ferguson (center with microphone), STS-135 commander, made some special presentations of a U.S. flag and a space shuttle model. Members of the joint shuttle and International Space Station crews in the picture are, from the left, JAXA astronaut Satoshi Furukawa, NASA astronauts Doug Hurley, Mike Fossum, Ron Garan and Ferguson, along with Russian cosmonauts Alexander Samokutyaev, Andrey Borisenko and Sergei Volkov. Not in the picture are NASA astronauts Sandy Magnus and Rex Walheim. The shuttle commander presented to the station and its current crew the small shuttle model and the U.S. flag that was originally flown into space on the first shuttle mission in 1981, and seen here at the finger tips of Fossum and Garan. The shuttle model, seen on the wall between Hurley and Fossum, was signed by program officials and the mission?s lead shuttle and station flight directors. ?What you don?t see is the signatures of the tens of thousands who rose to orbit with us over the past 30 years, if only in spirit,? Ferguson said. Photo credit: NASA