Endeavour Lands On Its Final Mission

You LA folks and other space junkies will be happy to know that the Space Shuttle Endeavour landed safely under the cover of darkness at Kennedy Space Center Wednesday to successfully conclude its 25th and last shuttle mission.

Endeavour is the shuttle you're slated to get once it's retired. (Bah humbug)  Yeah, we're still pissed about that in H-town

It landed the same emotional day the Space Shuttle Atlantis was rolled out to the KSC launchpad for the final time on its and the final shuttle mission which is scheduled to be launched on July 8.

“Your landing ends a vibrant legacy for this amazing vehicle that will long be remembered. Welcome home, Endeavour,” Mission Control told Commander Mark Kelly and his crewmates, who wrapped up the United States' portion of construction at the International Space Station during this 16 day mission.

Endeavour was the youngest of the space shuttle orbiters, and was built to replace the lost Challenger. It launched for the first time in 1992 and during its 25 missions has carried 170 crewmembers into space and back.   It has spent 299 days in space, orbited the Earth 4,671 times and traveled 122,883,151 miles.

As to what NASA and the US space program will do beyond exploring Mars and asteroids now that it's getting out of the Earth to orbit business as the Chinese are ramping up their spacefaring efforts is unclear at this point.

But one thing we must do is continue to explore space and develop the technology we'll need to keep the United States as a vibrant player in aerospace and space technology.

We also need to be getting busy developing the technology and the vehicles we'll need to get us humans to those nearby but distant stars that we know have planets circling them in addition to establishing colonies on the Moon and other places in our own celestial neighborhood. .

We either do that or cease calling ourselves a superpower.