[DeTomaso] NPC.. but interesting about Endeavour, from a friend working in the program.

[LaurieFerrari at aol.com]

WHEELS STOP. Swooping out of the nighttime sky to enter homeport a  final
time, the shuttle Endeavour has safely completed her spaceflight career  
that
covered 25 voyages to Earth orbit. 

Endeavour's rich history of  service to humanity over 19 years spanned
122,883,151 miles traveled, 4,677  orbits of the planet and 299 days aloft. 

The ship's maiden voyage in May  1992 was a dramatic adventure to rescue the
wayward Intelsat 603  telecommunications satellite that required the
astronauts to improvise with  the first-ever three-man spacewalk to manually
grab the spacecraft after  attempts using a specially-designed capture bar
failed to work. The ship also  conducted the first Hubble Space Telescope
servicing in 1993, one of the  stellar achievements for the space program
that installed corrective optics  to fix the observatory's flawed vision. 

Other trips in the 1990s  deployed and retrieved satellites, mapped the 
Earth
with radar and scanned  the cosmos with payloads carried in the orbiter's
cargo bay. She also visited  the Russian space station Mir once. 

Then Endeavour opened the  International Space Station era by launching the
first American piece of the  outpost -- the Unity connecting node -- to 
begin
orbital construction in  December 1998. Subsequent flights by Endeavour 
would
take up the station's  initial solar array power tower, all three sections 
of
Canada's robotics  including the arm, mobile transporter and Dextre hands,
the Japanese science  facility's "attic" and "back porch" for research, and
the Tranquility utility  room with the Cupola. 

This 12th mission to the International Space  Station by Endeavour finished
the American construction efforts, which this  ship originally began, by
adding the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer and a final  spare parts deck. 

Construction of Endeavour started in September 1987 as  a replacement 
vehicle
for Challenger. The spaceplane was rolled out of the  Palmdale factory in
April 1991. She became NASA's fifth and final operational  space shuttle 
with
her inaugural launch a year later. 

Once retired  from service, Endeavour will be safed and readied for museum
display in Los  Angeles.