Shuttle Endeavor touches down last time

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., June 1 (UPI) -- The space shuttle Endeavor landed at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the pre-dawn touchdown Wednesday completing its final mission before retirement.

The shuttle landed at 2:35 EDT after 248 orbits around Earth and a journey of 6,510,221 miles in its the 25th and final flight, NASA said.
PHOTOS: Shuttle Endeavor completes its final mission

Endeavor has spent spent a total of 299 days in space, orbited Earth 4,671 times and traveled 122,883,151 miles.

The shuttle undocked from the International Space Station Sunday night, ending a stay of 11 days, 17 hours and 41 minutes at the orbiting laboratory to deliver an install the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer.

"What a great ending to this really wonderful mission," Bill Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for Space Operations said.

Speaking of the spectrometer, Gerstenmaier said, "They're getting great data from their instrument on board the space station. It couldn't have gone any better for this mission."

As Endeavor touched down, technicians were completing the task of rolling the shuttle Atlantis out to launch pad 39A and securing it to its supports there for the last launch of the entire shuttle program, set for no earlier than July 8, NASA said.

Source: United Press International (UPI).
Link: http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2011/06/01/Shuttle-Endeavour-touches-down-last-time/UPI-97131306910249/.