The very Star Trek like Mission poster for STS 134
Today the Space Shuttle Endeavour launched from Kennedy Space Centre on its final flight. The flight was supposed to have launched on April 29 but a generator failure delayed it. This will be Endeavour's 25th flight and the 134th Shuttle flight overall. Endeavour is the newest shuttle, commissioned as a replacement for the ill-fated Challenger, and first flew in 1992.
Endeavour on the launch pad this morning
After her flight and de-commissioning she will be donated to the California Science Center although her Canadarm will be removed and sent to an, as yet, un-named Canadian museum.
AMS 02
Although the main job of mission STS-134 will be to deliver the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (to detect space particles) and an ExPRESS logistics carrier (A sort of super USB port hub to plug experiments onto) to the International Space Station the mission is also carrying 13 Lego brick sets for the astronauts to build and observe the effects of buiding Lego in microgravity. Just don't drop any bits and let them go floating into any vital bits of the station!
STS launches this morning at 8.56 EDT: there are now Lego bricks in space!
