The penultimate Shuttle flight
April 12th, 2011 at 8:50 pm (Spacecraft)
The Space Shuttle program is coming to an end. The next flight, STS-134, is currently scheduled for April 29, 2011. The goals of this mission are to deliver the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) and some communication antennas and other parts to the International Space Station. The flight readiness review will be on April 19, at which point they’ll determine the final launch date for Space Shuttle Endeavor.
Not an astronaut? You can still send your face to space at (no joke) Face in Space. NASA wants to literally UP-LOAD your digital image, along with the Space Shuttle, to the Space Station. Sure, it’d be faster to just send it on the comm link, but hey! This is outreach. So far, 315,048 people have participated. Your face won’t actually go up with STS-134, but instead with STS-135 — the final Shuttle flight. Last chance!
If you’d like the latest news from NASA, consider subscribing to one of the NASA RSS feeds. As we near the end of the Shuttle era, it will be interesting to see what next steps the agency takes.