Russian and European freighters will keep the space station stocked with food, water and supplies in the immediate future. The shuttle Discovery completed its final mission in March. The shuttles are being retired due to high operating costs and to free up funds to develop spaceships that can travel beyond the station’s orbit. “She’s got a lot of life left in her but that’s not meant to be,” launch director Mike Leinbach said of Endeavour’s last mission. The flight is the 134th in shuttle history. NASA had hoped Endeavour would be back from its final space mission by now, but the first launch attempt on April 29 was scuttled after a heater in one of the ship’s hydraulic power generators failed. ![]() The shuttle also carries a pallet of spare parts to tide over the station after the shuttle program ends this summer. The instrument, built by a consortium of 60 research agencies in 16 countries, is expected to sift through 25,000 cosmic ray hits a second and operate for at least the next 10 years while attached to the outside of the space station. “I apologize that the view wasn’t the best.”Įndeavour carries the $2 billion Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer particle detector, which is designed to analyze cosmic rays for fingerprints of dark matter, antimatter and other phenomena undetectable by traditional telescopes. “We don’t have any flight rules that dictate how long you can see the launch before it goes out of sight,” Mike Moses, the head of NASA’s mission management team, said jokingly. (1256 GMT) and quickly disappeared into the clouds, giving about 500,000 spectators on central Florida’s Atlantic coast a brief view. With Kelly and five other veteran astronauts aboard, Endeavour roared off its seaside launch pad at 8:56 a.m. “I think relief was her biggest feeling,” said Pia Carusone, Giffords’ chief of staff. She said “good stuff” as the shuttle soared through the sky, a spokeswoman said. Giffords, an Arizona Democrat, watched the launch with the families of the Endeavour crew in a private area at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. 8 assassination attempt that killed six people and injured 12 others. Representative Gabrielle Giffords, who is recovering from a Jan. NASA plans one more mission to the station, using the sister shuttle Atlantis, in July, before ending the shuttle program.Įndeavour’s last mission is being commanded by Mark Kelly, a four-time shuttle veteran who is married to U.S. The flight is the 25th and final one for the spacecraft Endeavour, which was expected to reach the orbital outpost on Wednesday. space shuttle Endeavour blasted off on Monday on the next-to-last flight in NASA’s shuttle program, carrying a potentially revolutionary physics experiment to the International Space Station.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |