NASA STS-134 Report #33 3 a.m. CDT Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Mission Control Center, Houston, Texas
HOUSTON – Endeavour made its last landing early this morning at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, concluding a successful mission to the International Space Station and a sterling 25-mission history.
“Your landing adds a vibrant legacy to this vehicle that will long be remembered,”
astronaut and entry capcom Barry Wilmore told Kelly after wheel stop. “Welcome home Endeavour.”
“It’s sad to see her land for the last time, 0/00 Kelly replied ,but she leaves a great legacy.”
Wednesday’s landing at 1:34:51 a.m. CDT ended a flight that covered 6.51 million miles in 248 orbits over 15 days, 17 hours and 39 minutes. It brought Endeavour’s 25-mission totals to 122.9 million miles in 4,671 orbits in 299 days in space.
On the STS-134 flight, Endeavour took to the station the 15,000-pound, $2-billion Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS)-2, a particle physics detector that could provide new knowledge of the makeup of our universe. It was installed robotically on May 19 and is functioning now. Also aboard was a cargo platform, Express Logistics Carrier 3. Packed with heavy spare parts for the station, it was installed May 18, shortly after docking.
Endeavour’s crew, Commander Mark Kelly, Pilot Greg H. Johnson and Mission Specialists Mike Fincke, Roberto Vittori, Andrew Feustel and Greg Chamitoff, also brought to the station additional equipment and supplies. They accomplished station maintenance tasks as well, including replacement of a desiccant/sorbent bed in a carbon dioxide removal assembly.
Feustel, Fincke and Chamitoff also did four spacewalks. Working in two-man teams, they performed numerous maintenance and installation tasks on the station’s exterior, including lubrication of a joint on the station truss that rotates solar arrays to follow the sun. They also secured a boom to extend the reach of the station’s Canadarm2 should that become necessary. The orbiter boom sensor system was left at the station by Endeavour.
During rendezvous and again after undocking the STORRM (Sensor Test for Orion Relative Navigation Risk Mitigation) was successfully performed. The test looked at development of an automated rendezvous and docking system.
Since its first flight in May 1992, a daring satellite recovery, repair and redeploy, Endeavour has flown the first space station assembly flight, made 11 more station flights and one to the Russian space station Mir, flown the first Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission and more.
The crew is scheduled to return to Houston for a public welcome at Ellington Field’s Hangar 990 about 4 p.m. Thursday.
