June 1, 2011

Wordless Wednesday: NASA Space Shuttle Endeavor Final Landing Back on Earth



3 comments:

Unknown said...

NASA space shuttle Endeavour has landed for the final time at Kennedy Space Center after 248 orbits around Earth and a journey of 6,510,221 miles on STS-134 mission. Endeavour's next 'mission' will be attracting guests to the California Science Center museum in Los Angeles.

The youngest NASA shuttle Endeavour, after a 19-year career and 299 days spent in space, touched down for the last time at about 2:36 am Eastern Time.

Endeavour’s main gear touched down at 2:34:51 and followed by the nose gear at 2:35:04 and wheels stopped at 2:35:36 am. STS-134 was the 25th and final flight for Endeavour, which spent 299 days in space, orbited Earth 4,671 times and traveled 122,883,151 miles.

The mission was about 16 days long. The crew members for Endeavour's STS-134 mission are Commander Mark Kelly, Pilot Gregory Johnson, Mission Specialists Michael Fincke, Greg Chamitoff, Andrew Feustel and European Space Agency astronaut Roberto Vittori.

The shuttle delivered a $2 billion cosmic ray detector, called Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer-2 (AMS), which will remain mounted on the space station for the next decade.

Martin Lindsey said...

A great era for NASA and American science comes to an end. Can't wait to see what the government and entrepreneurs come up with for the next phase of our space program.

Not to mention all the cosmic phenomena that has been recorded and to be studied by generations of future scientists.

Unknown said...

Martin - Personally, I hope that America is able to get NASA back up & running and back in outer space. I think that our nation should not rely on others ... especially the Russians ... when it comes to outer space exploration.

Just saying...