奋进号安全降落完成了历史使命：
0635 gmt (2:35 a.m. edt)
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.
