Endeavour finally launches

After many delays and malfunctions, the space shuttle Endeavour was launched early this morning to a large crowd at Cape Canaveral.  “The mission was delayed six times since its first scheduled target date, last July.”¹  If you haven’t been keeping track, budgetary cuts and a poor economy had practically shelved the entire NASA program, and today’s launch will be Endeavour’s last, with Atlantis flying the last scheduled launch in July.  After that, what lies ahead?  Nothing involving liftoff until at least 2018.  A few facts:

• The Endeavour is currently in its 25th flight and was originally launched back in 1992.
• Besides the Endeavour and the Atlantis, the Discovery is the other shuttle still in operation, but will no longer be used.
• The shuttles are built to withstand at least 100 flights.
• The liftoff weight of the shuttle and its rockets is about 4.5 million pounds!²
• The main purpose of this launch is to deliver and set up an astrophysics device called an Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS). The machine is supposed to collect cosmic rays which will possibly tell us a little more about “the makeup and origins of the universe.”³

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Read on:

ChicagoTribune.com – Space shuttle Endeavour launches at last

NASA.gov

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