Astronauts have arrived in preparation for the final launch of Endeavour

The six astronauts that will make the final crew of the space shuttle Endeavour, STS-134, arrived at the Kennedy Space Center on Thursday, May 12, 2011, in order to prepare once more for the launch on Monday.

This last mission for the shuttle includes Commander Mark Kelly, pilot Greg H. Johnson, mission specialists Greg Chamitoff, Andrew Feustel, Mike Fincke, as well as Roberto Vittori from the European Space Agency.

The launch is intended for 8:56am, with the countdown clock having started this morning at 7am.

The initial launch date for Endeavour was April 29, but it was cancelled at the last minute due to a failure with a heating device.

Kelly said “It’s great to be back,” and that “We really appreciate all the hard work by the team that’s worked over the last couple of weeks to get shuttle Endeavour ready”.

Johnson and Kelley have been practicing landings in training aircraft that have been altered to handle like the space shuttles.

If technical issues and weather play along, then the launch on Monday will be the 25th, as well as being the last mission for Endeavour, which is the youngest among all of the NASA orbiter shuttles.

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Posted by Louise Wellington on May 13 2011. Filed under Science. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.