to take crews and cargo deep into space. you know, with only three more shuttle missions scheduled, thousands of nasa employees are wondering what s next? we ll get to know one of them with the cnn of cnn at platform journalest join cowel. we are stand under the right hand wing of atlantis. i carry this model because there is no place that you can step back and see the entire orbiter. we knew from the beginning that the orbiter was designed to fly 100 flights so it wasn t some piece of spacecraft that was going to keep going on forever and ever. all of the gray-looking ones were pristine black like the ones that you see right here. they have been on since original bill. like the rest of our space history, we envisioned that when the shut his done their job that wield go on to the next program of exploration. the orbiter sees an average of 4.5 million miles in each