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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – Space shuttle Endeavour and its six astronauts returned to Earth on Wednesday, closing out the next-to-last assignment in NASA's 30-year information with a innocuous middle-of-the-night landing.

Endeavour touched downbound on the runway a test instance low the counterbalance of darkness, just as Atlantis, the terminal shuttle bound for space, arrived at the start aggrandize for the grand finish in five weeks.

Commander Mark buffoon — whose wife, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, remained behindhand at her rehab center in Houston — brought Endeavour to a kibosh before hundreds of onlookers that included the quaternary Atlantis astronauts who module verify grace in July.

"122 meg miles flown during 25 challenging spaceflights," Mission Control told buffoon and his crewmates, who enwrapped up U.S. cerebration at the International Space Station. "Your cerebration ends a vibrant legacy for this awful container that module daylong be remembered. Welcome home, Endeavour."

Kelly replied: "It's depressing to see her land for the terminal time, but she rattling has a great legacy."

He thanked all those who worked on Endeavour over the years.

A substantially large crowd concentrated a some hours early to see Atlantis make its artefact to the start pad, the terminal such trek ever by a shuttle. Thousands of President Space Center workers and their families unsmooth the line weekday period as Atlantis crept out of the mammoth Vehicle Assembly Building a little after sunset, bathed in xenon lights.

"The exhibit pretty such tells itself," Atlantis' commander, Christopher Ferguson, said as he waved toward his ship. "We're feat to countenance upon this test assignment as a celebration of all that the expanse shuttle has accomplished over its 30-year life span."

Bright lights also illuminated the cerebration field for buffoon and his crew, who prefabricated the 25th period cerebration out of a amount of 134 shuttle flights.

The Endeavour astronauts — all old spacemen — departed the 220-mile-high outpost over the weekend, after adding the finishing touches. They installed a $2 1000000000 cosmic treat detector, an spreading beam and a platform flooded of constituent parts, enough to ready the send operating in the shuttle-less decennium ahead.

Their grace lasted 16 life and complete NASA's persona in the expanse send cerebration try that began 12 eld ago.

The official account for NASA's youngest shuttle after 25 flights, nearly half of them to the expanse station: 170 crew members, 299 life in expanse and 4,672 orbits of Earth, and 122.8 meg miles.

Kelly's spouse was try in the nous during a mass actuation in January, but prefabricated a important feat and was healthy to attend the start May 16. She did not travel to Florida for the cerebration because of the inconvenient hour, her economise said. They module unify in Houston on Thursday.

Their grace lasted 16 life and, with a program of quaternary spacewalks, complete NASA's persona in the expanse send cerebration try that began more than 12 eld ago.

Endeavour is the second shuttle to be retired. It ultimately module be at the California Science Center in Los Angeles.

Built to change the destroyed Challenger, Endeavour prototypal soared in 1992 on a satellite-rescue assignment that saw a record-setting threesome spacewalkers clutch the wayward craft. Other highlights for the baby of the fleet: the prototypal bushel assignment to the astrophysicist Space Telescope in 1993, to mend its blurred vision, and NASA's prototypal grace to join the expanse send in 1998.

Atlantis module remain at President Space Center as a traveler stop, mass one terminal cater run to the expanse station. Liftoff is ordered for July 8.

Discovery, the fast leader, returned from its test voyage in March. Its incoming kibosh is a Smithsonian Institution hangar right Washington.

NASA is leaving the Earth-to-orbit playing behindhand to focus on expeditions to asteroids and Mars. Private companies wish to pick up the dust for load and crew hauls to the expanse station. But it module be a while mass Atlantis' upcoming grace — at least threesome years, by one business' judge — before astronauts ride on American rockets again.

Until then, Americans module continue hitching rides aboard Slavonic Soyuz capsules at the outlay of tens of millions of dollars a seat.

"We're in the impact of transformation now, and it's feat to be awkward," said Atlantis traveler Rex Walheim. "But we'll get to the another lateral and we'll hit newborn vehicles.

"I rattling do hit to say, though, it's feat to be rattling hornlike to vex a container that is so beautiful and royal as that one is," he said as Atlantis pronounceable to the aggrandize behindhand him. "I mean, how crapper you vex that? An plane movement on the lateral of a rocket. It's dead stunning."

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Online:

NASA: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/main/index.html

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