Endeavour 's Final Launch, in Pictures
Monday, May 16, 2011 - 14:00
in Astronomy & Space
NASA's shuttle Endeavour made a successful and historic launch at 8:56 a.m. Eastern Monday, as the agency approached the end of its shuttle program, first started in the 1960s. The lift-off marked Endeavour 's final mission and the second-to-last shuttle mission for NASA.The 16-day STS-134 mission, commanded by Mark Kelly, carried a cosmic-ray detector called the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer-2 , two communications antennae, a high-presure gas tank, parts for the Dextre robot and five additional astronauts to the International Space Station, including Pilot Gregory H. Johnson and Mission Specialists Michael Fincke, Greg Chamitoff, Andrew Feustel and European Space Agency astronaut Roberto Vittori. [More]