 |
|
U.S. space shuttle Endeavour comes in to land at Kennedy Space Center on June 1, 2011. Endeavour landed safely at Kennedy Space Center, wrapping up its final mission to space before becoming the next to last U.S. shuttle to retire. The spacecraft touched down at 2:34 a.m. ET at the end of a nearly 16-day mission to the International Space station. (Xinhua/Reuters Photo)
|
WASHINGTON, June 1 (Xinhua) -- U.S. space shuttle Endeavour landed safely at Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Wednesday morning, ending its 19-year flying career.
According to NASA TV, Endeavour touched down at 2:35 a.m. EDT (0635 GMT) after a 16-day service mission to the International Space Station (ISS).
Endeavour has traveled 196 million km by flight's end -- on all 25 of its voyages -- and spent 299 days in space. It's the youngest of NASA's shuttle fleet, first flying in 1992 as the replacement for Challenger, which was destroyed shortly after liftoff in 1986, killing its seven crew members.
"122 million miles flown during 25 challenging spaceflights," Mission Control told Endeavour commander Mark Kelly and his crewmates. "Your landing ends a vibrant legacy for this amazing vehicle that will long be remembered. Welcome home, Endeavour."
"It's sad to see her land for the last time, but she really has a great legacy," Kelly replied.
Endeavour blasted off on May 16 from the Kennedy Space Center to deliver to the ISS a 2-billion-dollar, multinational particle detector known as the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS).
The AMS is designed to search for various types of unusual matter by measuring cosmic rays. Its experiments will help researchers study the formation of the universe and search for evidence of dark matter, strange matter and antimatter.
During their stay at the station, the Endeavour crew conducted four spacewalks to complete construction of the U.S. side of the 100-billion-dollar space station, a project of 16 nations that has been assembled in orbit since 1998.
They also brought up a logistics carrier with spare parts and performed maintenance and installation work during four spacewalks, the last to be carried out by an American shuttle crew.
