On this day in space! May 16, 2011: Space Shuttle Endeavour launches on final flight

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On May 16, 2011, the space shuttle Endeavour launched on its 25th and final flight.

On May 16, 2011, the space shuttle Endeavour launched on its 25th and final flight. This was also the penultimate mission of the entire shuttle program.

On May 14, 1973, NASA launched Skylab, the first American space station. (Image credit: NASA/Tony Gray and Tom Farrar)

When they got there, they dropped of a bunch of science experiments and other supplies. They also did four spacewalks to install new equipment outside of the space station and do some other routine maintenance.

Endeavour’s primary payload was the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, a particle physics experiment that would study cosmic radiation and look for antimatter and dark matter. They also installed new external sensors to help future missions dock there.

Over the course of this mission, Endeavour clocked more than 6 million miles. The shuttle traveled more than 122 million miles over the course of its 19 years in service. After it retired, it was moved to the California Science Center in Los Angeles.

On This Day in Space: See our full 365-day video archive!

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Hanneke Weitering
Hanneke Weitering
Contributing expert

Hanneke Weitering is a multimedia journalist in the Pacific Northwest reporting on the future of aviation at FutureFlight.aero and Aviation International News and was previously the Editor for Spaceflight and Astronomy news here at Space.com. As an editor with over 10 years of experience in science journalism she has previously written for Scholastic Classroom Magazines, MedPage Today and The Joint Institute for Computational Sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. After studying physics at the University of Tennessee in her hometown of Knoxville, she earned her graduate degree in Science, Health and Environmental Reporting (SHERP) from New York University. Hanneke joined the Space.com team in 2016 as a staff writer and producer, covering topics including spaceflight and astronomy. She currently lives in Seattle, home of the Space Needle, with her cat and two snakes. In her spare time, Hanneke enjoys exploring the Rocky Mountains, basking in nature and looking for dark skies to gaze at the cosmos.