Space Shuttle Endeavour Headed Home for Last Time

Artist's rendering of the multi-purpose crew vehicle on a deep-space mission. (NASA)

The shuttle Endeavour and its crew will finally return to Earth early Wednesday morning, completing one of NASA's final shuttle flights, a program that was launched almost 30 years ago.
Having departed the International Space Station late Sunday, Endeavour's entry flight control team will evaluate weather conditions at the landing site at Merritt Island, Fla., before giving the approval to land, according to NASA
The 25th and final flight for Endeavour also marks the final shuttle flight for the six-man crew aboard Endeavour. The seasoned astronauts are wrapping up a 16-day mission, where they completed assembly of the U.S. section of the International Space Station.
Endeavour's crew includes Cmd. Mark Kelly, Greg Johnson, who's piloting the mission, spacewalkers Mike Fincke, Drew Feustel and Greg Chamitoff, and European Space Agency astronaut Roberto Vittori, who's handling robotics.
"To see the horizon out there, with all that hardware beneath you and to understand what we've done as a nation and as a world to build that international space station; it's spectacular," Astronaut Drew Feustel said.
Spacewalker Fincke, who has spent months living on the space station in years past, now holds the U.S. record for time in space, at 380 days. "I hope my record is soon broken," Finkle said.
The most important project on this journey for the crew is to aid in the explanation of possible origins of the universe; they've hauled Endeavour into space so they can search for "unusual" kinds of matter.
Endeavour delivered a $2 billion cosmic ray detector, called Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer-2 (AMS), which will remain on the space station for the next decade. The cosmic ray detector is searching for antimatter and dark matter, which scientists hope will shed light on the origins of the universe.
"Understanding what the universe is -- the universe we live in, how we all got here, how it was formed -- these are fundamental questions, and this is what AMS is going to be trying to understand for us," Chamitoff said.
The mission, which also included adding finishing touches on the orbiting lab while adding an extension beam and a platform full of spare parts, has been a complete success for NASA.

Emotional Trip for Kelly

Being a final space walk makes the journey special for the entire crew, but this trip was a particularly heartrending one for Kelly, whose wife, U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, is still recovering from a gunshot wound to the head, after being shot in Tucson, Ariz., almost five months ago.
Kelly made the emotional decision to go up into space while Giffords was still going into surgery. She underwent a successful cranioplasty surgery in Houston two weeks ago.

"I think it was the right decision. She was ready for the surgery," Kelly said.
NASA arranged for a videoconference between Giffords and Kelly, so they would be able to see each other during Endeavour's mission. Kelly was able to keep informed of his wife's condition by using the Internet phone aboard the space station.
Speaking with ABC News via satellite video, Kelly also shared some new good news about Giffords' progress.
"She'll be doing rehab for some continuing period of time," he said. "But at some point pretty soon she'll become an outpatient. So we're really looking forward to that. And it's all really encouraging."
After the Endeavor lands at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida Wednesday, there will be only one more shuttle flight; the Atlantis, which will probably land in early July. After it lands for the final time on Wednesday, Endeavour will go on display in a Los Angeles museum.
Although it means the end to the shuttle program, supporters hope that NASA will turn to deep space exploration, with astronauts heading to asteroids, and someday Mars.
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