Kennedy Space Center, Florida (CNN) -- For Space Shuttle Endeavour Commander Mark Kelly, there was excellent news leading up to the launch. His wife, U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, is there to watch the lift off.
A bullet tore via the Arizona congresswoman's pate, almost taking her life, fewer than four months ago.
After the shooting at Giffords' town hall meeting, it was precarious if Kelly would linger on to directive the mission. This bittersweet love anecdote has seen Kelly continue exercising when costing nearly each nightfall at his wife's side.
A few months ago, before his wife's shooting, Kelly talked about his upcoming mission.
"Flying in space namely a quite complicated object to give up," Kelly said. "I memorize later my final flight musing 'Well,
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Kelly said that when STS 134, the Endeavour's last flight, is over,
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As the space shuttle program winds down with the last launch, the Atlantis, set for this summer, numerous in the astronaut regiment are wrestling with what they'll do afterward. Russian rockets will be the merely path for American astronauts to get to space for the foreseeable future.
Endeavour mission specialist Mike Fincke spent a aggregate of a year in space on the worldwide space station, getting there and behind twice on Russian rockets,
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Fincke doesn't ambition to leave NASA.
"I trust in what we are doing," he said. "It's pretty unbelievable, taking human off the planet Earth and hopefully exploring the solar system."
When mission specialist Drew Feustel goes into space on the Endeavour, it will be his second shuttle flight. He helped mend the Hubble Space Telescope on his first voyage into orbit.
Growing up in Detroit with a dad and uncle who were technicians served him well, Feustel said.
"I began at one early age with motorcycles and bicycles and then eventually bought my premier car ahead I was old ample to drive it, and took it separately in my garage," he said. "There's at fewest 1 alternatively 2 projects in the garage."
He was hoping to get them done before this flight, but after all check there was still work to do.
He'll have a lot of go apt do above this mission, with four spacewalks blueprinted. These walks ambition get the space station ready for the period while shuttle crews can't get there. The spacewalkers ambition repossess experiments,
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Endeavour's cargo gulf will carry the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer. At a spend of $1.5 billion, it is the maximum valuable piece of equipment a space shuttle has ever carried.
The AMS is devised to occupy space motes, like anti-matter and dark material, which scientists know very tiny about. The AMS will be mounted outdoor the space station. Scientists hope it will guide to a better understanding of how the universe began and evolved.
The two-week mission will be the end of the space road for Endeavour, built to replace the shuttle Challenger, which was lost with its crew in an blast during ascent in 1986.
Since Endeavour's first mission in 1992, it has flown many space-station construction missions and the first Hubble servicing mission.
Endeavour and the additional orbiters have been remarkable flying machines, pilot Gregory Johnson said.
"We have put satellites up into orbit," Johnson said. "We have done charting of the whole topography of the Earth. We have taken up the Hubble Telescope and serviced it several times. And we've built this colossal space station. The traffic has done its job."
NASA recently announced namely when Endeavour returns it will be made ready for its last journey to a permanent home, on display by the California Science Center in Los Angeles.
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