Space Shuttle Endeavour's Last Launch: See Photos From The May 16 Blastoff

CAPE CANAVERAL, FL - MAY 16: The space shuttle Endeavour lifts off from Launch Pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center on May 16, 2011 in Cape Canaveral, Florida. After 20 years, 25 missions and more than 115 million miles in space, Endeavour is on its final flight to the International Space Station before being retired and donated to the California Science Center in Los Angeles. Mission STS-134 will deliver the Express Logistics Carrier-3 (ELC-3) and the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS-2) to the International Space Station.

New Experiments Headed to Station on STS-134/ULF6

 
The Space Shuttle Endeavour launched to the International Space Station on May 16, carrying with it a mix of research that will be performed on the station during and after the shuttle mission. Nearly 150 experiments are continuing aboard the station as the transition from assembly work to expanded research on the international laboratory progresses. They span the basic categories of biological and biotechnology, human research, physical and materials sciences, technology development, Earth and space science and educational activities.

Among the new experiments flying will be several experiments, flown by NASA in cooperation with the Italian Space Agency, including one that looks at how the same kind of memory shape foam used in beds on Earth might be useful as a new kind of actuator, or servomechanism that supplies and transmits a measured amount of energy for mechanisms. The U.S.-Italian experiments also will look at cellular biology, radiation, plant growth and aging; how diet may affect night vision, and how an electronic device may be able used for air quality monitoring in spacecraft.

One NASA experiment known as Biology will use, among other items, C. elegans worms that are descendants of worms that survived the STS-107 space shuttle Columbia accident. The Rapid Turn Around engineering proof-of-concept test will use the Light Microscopy Microscope to look at three-dimensional samples of live organisms, tissue samples and fluorescent beads.

A NASA educational payload will deliver several toy Lego kits that can be assembled to form satellites, space shuttles and a scale model of the space station itself to demonstrate scientific concepts, and a Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency experiment called Try Zero-G that will help future astronauts show children the difference between microgravity and Earth gravity.

Research activities on the shuttle and station are integrated to maximize return during station assembly. The shuttle serves as a platform for completing short-duration research, while providing supplies and sample-return for ongoing research on station. For a full list of investigations available on this flight, see the STS-134 

NASA's Black Hole: After Last Shuttle Launch, Will U.S. Space Dominance End?

 
To some veterans of the American space program, the liftoff of the Space Shuttle Endeavor Monday morning was bittersweet.
After decades of American dominance in space exploration, the next-to-last shuttle flight brings country to the threshold of a period that experts are calling "The Gap," -- the first significant stretch of time in decades during which the U.S. will be unable, on its own, to put astronauts into space.
"I don't like it at all," said Rep. C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger, a Maryland Democrat who has led oversight of the space program. "The previous administrations have not made space a priority. It's expensive. Now we're in this situation."
If the fears of some in Congress come true, a period of unprecedented drift for the space program could follow the final Shuttle launch, now scheduled for July. With no American vehicle capable of carrying astronauts into space, the U.S. will be forced to pay the Russians a steadily escalating price -- eventually hitting $62.7 million per seat -- to carry Americans and international partners to the International Space Station through 2016.
Meanwhile, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden told ABC News that the U.S. will be relying on a relatively young collection of private companies to build the rockets that will restart American-led missions to the space station, which he estimates will begin launching by 2015.

"Everybody knew it was coming," Bolden said of The Gap. "The primary hurdle it creates is that people will become comfortable with it. We tend to be short-sighted and our memory is short." NASA officials are quick to note that under the Bush administration's space initiative, known as Constellation, The Gap would have lasted eight years. A six-year gap, if all goes as planned, would pass more quickly than the eight-year gap between the end of the Apollo program and the launch of the first space shuttle in 1981.
The public posture of NASA officials has been to focus on a modernized program that relies far more on private companies to handle the increasingly routine work of hoisting satellites and servicing the space station, while dedicating U.S. government resources to planning the more complex task of taking astronauts deeper into space. Bolden says NASA will be developing a separate, heavy-lift rocket to explore deep space and eventually, maybe, take astronauts to an asteroid, the moon, and Mars.