![]() Fourteen astronauts were killed in the disasters. Two of the original fleet were destroyed by explosions in flight - Challenger in 1986 and Columbia in 2003. Discovery retired after returning from its final mission in March. NASA has an incredible workforce, it is very talented and you know, from the late 1950s to today we have taken on great challenges and we have never failed." Endeavour is the youngest of the space flying fleet, which also includes Discovery and Atlantis. ![]() "But over time, we will get the right mix of people. "People leave, you know, engineers and operations people will move on and do other things, so it is the corporate memory that I think I am most worried about," said Kelly, 47. "There is going to be a period of time when Americans aren't flying on US spacecraft, so that's a challenge," shuttle commander Mark Kelly told US media in a broadcast from space on the last day of Endeavour's mission. NASA has said that a shuttle replacement could emerge sometime between 20. After the US shuttle era, the world's astronauts will rely on Russia's space capsules for transit to the orbiting lab at a cost of $51 million per seat until a new US crew vehicle can be built by private enterprise. Endeavour later began its deorbit by firing its engines about an hour ahead of landing in order to slow the vehicle enough to allow it to fall out of orbit. The event marked a major milestone toward the end of a three-decade program of human space flight and exploration, and it drew thousands of camera-toting employees and media. The final flight by US shuttle Atlantis is set for July 8, and NASA sent the shuttle from the Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center out to the launch pad one last time at 8:00 pm (0000 GMT). The astronauts are wrapping up STS-134, a 16-day mission to the International Space Station, where they installed a $2 billion physics experiment to probe the origins of the universe and conducted four spacewalks. Endeavour and its crew of six astronauts - five Americans and one Italian - were to glide in for a nighttime touchdown at Florida's Kennedy Space Center at 2:35 am (0635 GMT), the US space agency NASA said on Tuesday. The space shuttle Endeavour prepared for its final landing early Wednesday and the conclusion of the next to last mission of the 30-year-old US shuttle program.
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