#SPACE SHUTTLE ENDEAVOUR BROWN MARKS PLUS#

Nearly half a million people crowded into the Florida Space Coast to witness history first hand.

#SPACE SHUTTLE ENDEAVOUR BROWN MARKS PLUS#

Endeavour disappeared into the clouds at about T plus 25 seconds. The rumbling thunder seemed much louder than normal, perhaps due to the cloud cover. I witnessed Endeavour's majestic launch from the KSC press site next to the world famous countdown clock.Įndeavour's three main engines roared to life six seconds before the twin Solid Rocket Boosters were ignited and pushed the shuttle off the pad atop a tremendous roar and brilliant flames shooting from Endeavour's tail. Overcast skies moved in over the pad in the last 30 minutes of the countdown and nearly derailed the launch again. Endeavour lifted off from Pad 39 A at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) at 8:56 a.m. It's sad to see her land for the last time, but she really has a great legacy.'Įndeavour blasted off at last on her historic final spaceflight on May 16 following a two week delay caused by a heater malfunction in the fuel line that powers the orbiters hydraulics. '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. '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,' said Kelly. STS-134 was the 36th shuttle mission dedicated to ISS assembly and maintenance. Simultaneously they completed the construction of the US portion of the ISS.

The crew conducted the last 4 spacewalks that will ever by carried out by shuttle crew members during the space shuttle era. It couldn't have gone any better for this mission.' 'What a great ending to this really wonderful mission,' said Bill Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for Space Operation at a briefing for reporters 'They're getting great data from their instrument on board the space station. Nobel Prize Winner Samuel Ting of MIT leads the international science project. The AMS science instrument is sponsored by the United States and 15 other countries across the globe. The $2 Billion Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) may revolutionize our understanding of how the Universe was born and evolved over time. AMS is a state-of-the-art cosmic ray detector that seeks to unveil the invisible universe and search for evidence of dark matter, strange matter, and antimatter. The primary goal of the highly productive flight was the delivery of the $2 Billion Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) to the International Space Station. Johnson and Mission Specialists Mike Fincke, Drew Feustel, Greg Chamitoff and the European Space Agency's Roberto Vittori. Shuttle Commander Mark Kelly led the STS-134 mission.

Space shuttle endeavour brown marks