Shuttle Endeavour Completes Final Mission

[Skylon]

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/shuttle/s ... 10601land/

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FL--Signaling the beginning of the end for NASA's storied shuttle program, the Endeavour plunged back to Earth Wednesday, closing out its 25th and final flight and passing the baton to its sistership Atlantis, which was hauled to the launching pad a few hours earlier for blastoff July 8 on the program's final voyage.

With commander Mark Kelly and pilot Gregory Johnson at the controls, Endeavour dropped out of a moonless sky and into the glare of powerful xenon floodlights after a fiery descent from orbit, settling to a ghostly touchdown on runway 15 at 2:34:51 a.m. EDT (GMT-4).

Barreling down the 300-foot-wide landing strip at more than 200 mph, Johnson deployed a large red-and-white braking parachute, Kelly brought the nose down and Endeavour coasted to a stop on the runway centerline.

"Houston, Endeavour. Wheels stopped," Kelly radioed in a traditional call to Houston.

"One-hundred-twenty-two-million miles flown during 25 challenging space flights, your landing ends a vibrant legacy for this amazing vehicle that will long be remembered," astronaut Barry "Butch" Wilmore replied from mission control. "Welcome home, Endeavour."

"Thank you, Houston," Kelly said. "You know, the space shuttle is an amazing vehicle, to fly through the atmosphere, hit it at Mach 25, steer through the atmosphere like an airplane, land on a runway, it is really, really an incredible ship.

"On behalf of my entire crew, I want to thank every person who's worked to get this mission going and every person who's worked on Endeavour. It's sad to see her land for the last time, but she really has a great legacy."

While engineers and technicians swarmed around the orbiter for post-flight "safing," Kelly, Johnson, European Space Agency flight engineer Roberto Vittori and spacewalkers Michael Fincke, Gregory Chamitoff and Andrew Feustel doffed their pressure suits and joined senior NASA managers on the runway for a traditional walk-around inspection before departing for crew quarters and reunions with friends and family.

Before leaving the orbiter, Johnson shut down the ship's three hydraulic power units and a moment later, their fiery exhaust plumes flickered out for the last time, a poignant reminder Endeavour's flying days were over.

During the course of Endeavour's 16-day mission, Kelly and his crewmates attached a $2 billion cosmic ray detector to the International Space Station, installed a pallet of spare components, staged four spacewalks to conduct needed maintenance and helped the station crew repair a U.S. oxygen generator and a carbon dioxide scrubber.

Mission duration was 15 days 17 hours 38 minutes and 23 seconds, a voyage spanning 248 complete orbits and 6.5 million miles since blastoff May 16. Over the course of its 25-mission career, Endeavour logged 122,853,853 million miles, 4,671 orbits and 299 days in space, carrying the first and last U.S. components to the International Space Station.

And then there was one.

[Iroscato]

If the final Atlantis launch is televised in Britain, I'd like to watch it. To witness the end of decades of innovative space travel would be nice. Fingers crossed for a safe journey for the crew.

[Skylon]

NASA finally has posted pictures taken from a departing Soyuz of Endeavour docked to ISS during this last mission.

http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/ima ... page2.html

They make for an interesting pair on orbit.