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NASA's youngest shuttle - the baby of the fleet with just 25 space voyages - is due back in Florida early Wednesday. It was a dark, solitary image against the blue, cloud-covered Earth and grew increasingly smaller. The space station crew beamed down video of the departing shuttle, the last ever shot of Endeavour in orbit. "Endeavour looks real nice out there," space station resident Ronald Garan Jr.
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(AP)Įndeavour and its crew of six left the International Space Station and headed home to close out NASA's next-to-last shuttle flight, pausing just long enough Monday to perform a victory lap and test equipment for a future interplanetary ship. Facebook Email In this image provided by NASA, astronaut Andrew Feustel works in the space shuttle Endeavour' s payload bay during the mission' s first spacewalk at the International Space Station Friday, May 20. Follow for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter and on Facebook. You can follow senior writer Mike Wall on Twitter. It will be Endeavour's 25th flight, and it will blast off just one week after the 30th anniversary of NASA's first shuttle mission – STS-1 – which launched on the Columbia orbiter on April 12, 1981. The mission will be NASA's 134th shuttle mission since the fleet began launching into space. Kelly leads a crew of six astronauts for Endeavour's mission. The experiment is a huge detector designed to study cosmic rays and antimatter, and peer into the building blocks of the universe. "We don't have final approval from her doctors yet, but we are pretty hopeful that she may be able to get down here."Įndeavour's final mission is a 14-day spaceflight to deliver an instrument called the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer to the International Space Station. Kelly anticipated this question, addressing it at the beginning of the press conference. Giffords is apparently making great strides in her recovery, and some have speculated that she might be able to make the trip to Florida to see her husband off. Kelly is married to Arizona Senator Gabrielle Giffords, who is recuperating in a Houston hospital after being shot in the head in Tucson in January. He added that, despite the weather, everything's on schedule to finish up the dress rehearsal tomorrow. "This is the time when our training meets the processing of the vehicle," Kelly said. Their work culminates with a dress rehearsal of launch day for the astronauts and the whole launch team on Friday. The six astronauts who will fly on the STS-134 mission are at KSC this week to prep for launch. But technicians will need to do a thorough survey to make sure the weather didn't cause any larger problems, they added. Initial assessments indicate very little damage to Endeavour - perhaps only some minor nicks to the foam insulation on the shuttle's external fuel tank, officials said. Hail was spotted near the pad, and there was a lightning strike about a half mile from the pad’s center, officials said. Air Force's Weather Squadron, the launchpad saw sustained winds of 57 mph (50 knots) yesterday, with a peak gust of 90 mph (79 knots).
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Today's bad weather also is delaying attempts to do a thorough survey of Endeavour and the pad - a necessity to check for damage after yesterday's strong storm.Īccording to the U.S. "But, as you guys know, we only need one approach in the orbiter." "I got two approaches and Greg got one before we had to land due to some lousy weather - rain, and lightning getting close to the field," Kelly said.
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After extended practice in the vehicle yesterday, both had to shut things down early today, Kelly said. Kelly and Endeavour pilot Greg Johnson, for example, had to curtail their flights in NASA's shuttle training airplane - which helps astronauts prepare to land the shuttle - today.