Shuttle Endeavour Lands Safely

Space shuttle Endeavour and her crew of six astronauts (Commander Mark Kelly, Pilot Gregory H. Johnson, Mission Specialists Michael Fincke, Greg Chamitoff, Andrew Feustel and European Space Agency astronaut Roberto Vittori) landed safely at the Kennedy Space Center on schedule at approximately 2:35 am EDT, 1 June 2011.

This landing caps a career for Shuttle Endeavour that includes some 299 days in space and travel of more than 122.8 million miles during its 25 flights. It launched on its first mission on 7 May 1992. This most recent mission, STS-134, was a sixteen day flight to the International Space Station (ISS). This was the final flight of Endeavour and she will now be prepped for delivery, it is believed, to a museum in California for display. There is a very small chance the shuttle fleet will be transferred to a private commercial operator to resume flying.

This landing of Endeavour was at night, a somewhat more challenging approach than arrival during daytime. However, as Commander Mark Kelly said during an interview on this very flight, since most space shuttle landings are essentially instrument approaches, the time of day does not have that significant of an effect.

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