Penultimate Space Shuttle Crew Discusses Recent Mission

The last crew to fly aboard space shuttle Endeavour will discuss its mission to the International Space Station — the penultimate flight of the shuttle program. The astronauts of the STS-134 flight and three members of the station’s Expedition 26 crew will be in the Washington area on Thursday, Aug. 4.

Mark Kelly commanded the STS-134 mission and was joined by Pilot Greg H. Johnson and Mission Specialists Mike Fincke, Drew Feustel, Greg Chamitoff and European Space Agency astronaut Roberto Vittori. The astronauts completed a 16-day mission to the station in June.

The shuttle crew members will give a presentation to NASA employees about their 16-day mission at 10 a.m. EDT at NASA Headquarters’ James E. Webb Auditorium, located at 300 E St. SW in Washington. The presentation will air live on NASA Television and the agency’s website. Both crews will be available for media interviews from 1 to 2 p.m. Journalists must call 202-358-1100 to attend the presentation or to schedule an interview.

Expedition 26 Commander Scott Kelly and Flight Engineers Cady Coleman and European Space Agency astronaut Paolo Nespoli also will be available to news media representatives.

Later that day, NASA and the Maryland Space Grant Consortium invite the public to a discussion with Mark Kelly, Johnson, Finke and Vittori at 6:30 p.m. at The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. The astronauts will share their video presentation and answer questions from the audience at the Bloomberg Center for Physics and Astronomy’s Schafler Auditorium. Free parking is available in the Muller parking deck on San Martin Drive, adjacent to Bloomberg. Reporters interested in covering the event should contact Lisa De Nike at 443-287-9960 or Lde@jhu.edu.

The STS-134 crew delivered the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer-2 (AMS) to the space station. AMS, a particle physics detector, searches for various types of unusual matter by measuring cosmic rays. Its experiments are helping researchers study the formation of the universe and search for evidence of dark matter, strange matter and antimatter. The mission also flew the Expedite the Processing of Experiment to Space Station (Express) Logistics Carrier 3 (ELC-3), a platform that carries spare parts that will sustain space station operations now that the shuttles have been retired from service.

During the mission’s four spacewalks, astronauts conducted maintenance work and installed new station components. They were the last spacewalks by shuttle crew members. For more information about the STS-134 crew members and their mission, visit: http://go.nasa.gov/sts-134

For a map of the Johns Hopkins campus (the Bloomberg Center is building #56 and the Muller parking deck is #58), visit: http://bit.ly/nHVn0h

For more information about the space station, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/station

For NASA TV schedule information and links to streaming video, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/ntv