Date: May 31, 2011

Title: End of an Endeavour

Podcaster: Pam Griffin

Description: In the early hours of tomorrow morning, June 1, the space shuttle Endeavour is due to make her final flight, returning from the International Space Station to Earth. In this podcast we take a look back at some of Endeavour’s achievements and the history of NASA’s youngest space shuttle.

Bio: Pam Griffin has no qualifications in astronomy aside from having studied a few short courses at the Open University, but has enjoyed looking up at the stars since 1986, when Halley’s Comet last visit the solar system and caught the then-seven-year-old girl’s imagination.

Sponsor: This episode of 365 Days of Astronomy is sponsored by — NO ONE. We still need sponsors for many days in 2011, so please consider sponsoring a day or two. Just click on the “Donate” button on the lower left side of this webpage, or contact us at signup@365daysofastronomy.org.

Transcript:

The End of an Endeavour – Podcast May 31, 2011

Hi, my name’s Pam Griffin and I’m your host for this episode of the 365 Days of Astronomy podcast.

Like thousands – if not millions – of other people, I was glued to my computer screen on Tuesday May 16 to watch the final launch of the space shuttle Endeavour. The shuttle crew led by Commander Mark Kelly were the final crew to travel on Endeavour, which is currently docked at the International Space Station and making preparations to return to Earth for the last time in the early hours of tomorrow morning, June 1.

The mission – designated STS-134 – was Endeavour’s 25th trip into space. Not including STS-134, Endeavour clocked up 116,372,930 miles – including 4,423 orbits of Earth – and spent 283 days in space.

Built to replace the space shuttle Challenger at a cost of US$1.8 billion, Endeavour – designated Orbiter Vehicle-105, or OV-105 – is the youngest of NASA’s six orbiters. Enterprise was never designed to fly, Challenger was destroyed shortly after lift-off in 1986, and Columbia disintegrated during re-entry in 1996. Of the remaining shuttles, Discovery made her last flight in February this year and Atlantis is due to take off on the final space shuttle mission STS-135 on June 28.

Endeavour blasted off for her first mission – STS-49 – on May 7, 1992, and immediately began setting records. The purpose of STS-49 was to fit a new rocket motor to the INTELSAT VI (F-3) communications satellite, which had been unusable due to being in an unstable orbit since being launched in 1990.

During work to stabilise the satellite the mission set records including the first EVA – that’s extra-vehicular activity, or spacewalk – involving three astronauts, for being the first shuttle mission to feature four EVA, and having the first and second longest EVAs to date at 8 hours 29 minutes and 7 hours 45 minutes.

During the flight, which lasted a total of 8 days, 21 hours, 17 minutes, 38 seconds, the shuttle and her crew travelled 3.7 million miles. And its landing back at the Kennedy Space Centre also set a milestone, being the first to use a drag chute during a shuttle landing.

Other milestones racked up by the shuttle included the first Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission in February 1993 on STS-61; installing the Unity module of the ISS, which was the first US component of the station, in December 1998 on STS-88; and completing the hundredth space shuttle mission in April 2001, again to the ISS.

The shuttle has rendezvoused with both Mir and the ISS, which it helped to assemble, and carried out numerous Spacelab experiments.

Which brings us back to STS-134. The mission was to deliver spare parts to the ISS and to deliver and help install the new Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer. During the mission the shuttle crew saw another milestone, being the first – and most likely the last – to see a Soyuz capsule depart from the station while a shuttle is docked. The departing ISS crew took advantage of the opportunity to take pictures of the ISS and Endeavour, and the pictures are due to be posted on the NASA website at www.nasa.gov.

Once the mission is over, Endeavour will return to Kennedy Space Centre and will be decommissioned, then sent to the California Science Center to be put on display and hopefully to inspire future generations of space explorers.

Shuttle Commander Mark Kelly spoke about the end of Endeavour’s mission during an interview with various US radio stations, which was also broadcast on NASA TV on May 24, 2011. He said: “After we land, Endeavour will head off to a museum, so it’s kinda sad. It’s an incredible ship and we’ll all be sad to see it retire.”

During the same event, Mission Specialist Mike Fincke, who during STS-134 became the US astronaut who has spent most time in space, called the mission “bittersweet”, saying, “You look out of the cupola [on the ISS] and you see this giant space shuttle outside. It looks like it belongs here. It’s a beautiful machine and it works beautifully. When I was a little kid I always wanted to fly in the space shuttle. It was worth the wait. Endeavour is a beautiful bird. Sure, it’s bittersweet that it’s her last mission, but she saved the best for last. It’s difficult to think of it in a museum. It’s the end of an era, but the ti

End of podcast:

365 Days of Astronomy
=====================
The 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast is produced by the Astrosphere New Media Association. Audio post-production by Preston Gibson. Bandwidth donated by libsyn.com and wizzard media. Web design by Clockwork Active Media Systems. You may reproduce and distribute this audio for non-commercial purposes. Please consider supporting the podcast with a few dollars (or Euros!). Visit us on the web at 365DaysOfAstronomy.org or email us at info@365DaysOfAstronomy.org. Until tomorrow…goodbye.