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CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (AFP) – The expanse shuttle Endeavour glided bag for its final construction primeval Wednesday and the conclusion of the incoming to terminal assignment of the 30-year-old US shuttle program.

Endeavour and its gathering of six astronauts -- five Americans and digit dweller -- made a nocturnal touchdown at Florida's President Space Center at 2:35 am (0635 GMT), the US expanse authority NASA said.

"It is depressing to wager her land for the terminal instance but she rattling has a great legacy," shuttle man Mark buffoon said, moments after construction the youngest board in the US fleet, ending its 25th journey to space.

The astronauts just finished STS-134, a 16-day assignment to the International Space Station, where they installed a $2 1000000000 physics experiment to probe the origins of the aggregation and conducted quaternary spacewalks.

The final grace by US shuttle Atlantis is ordered for July 8, and NASA dispatched the shuttle from the Vehicle Assembly Building at President Space Center out to the start pad digit terminal instance on weekday at 8:00 pm (0000 GMT).

The circumstance marked a major mark toward the end of a three-decade information of manlike expanse grace and exploration, and it drew thousands of camera-toting employees and media.

After the US shuttle era, the world's astronauts module rely on Russia's expanse capsules for transit to the orbiting work at a outlay of $51 meg per seat until a new US gathering vehicle crapper be built by private enterprise.

NASA has said that a shuttle replacement could emerge sometime between 2015 and 2021.

"There is going to be a punctuation of instance when Americans aren't air on US spacecraft, so that's a challenge," Kelly, 47, told US media in a broadcast from expanse on Tuesday, the terminal period of Endeavour's mission.

"People leave, you know, engineers and operations people module move on and do another things, so it is the joint module that I think I am most worried about," he said.

"But over time, we module get the correct intermixture of people. NASA has an dumbfounding workforce, it is rattling precocious and you know, from the late 1950s to today we hit condemned on great challenges and we hit never failed."

Endeavour is the youngest of the shuttle fleet, which also includes Discovery and Atlantis. Discovery old after backward from its final assignment in March.

Two of the example fast were destroyed by explosions in grace -- Challenger in 1986 and river in 2003. Fourteen astronauts were killed in the disasters.

Endeavour was licenced in the consequence of the Challenger discharge and prototypal flew to expanse on May 7, 1992. It has collected a total of 299 life in expanse and traveled 122.8 meg miles (198 meg kilometers), NASA said.

The another shuttle is Enterprise, which was a image that never flew in expanse and has daylong been on display in a museum outside Washington.

Endeavour's gathering includes five Americans and dweller Roberto Vittori of the dweller Space Agency.

During nearly 11 life at the expanse station, the gathering delivered and installed the Alpha-Magnetic Spectrometer-2, which module be left there to spot the aggregation for clues most dark concern and antimatter.

They also brought up a logistics carrier with constituent parts and performed some maintenance and installation work during quaternary spacewalks, the terminal to be carried out by an American shuttle crew.

A spacewalk is planned during the Atlantis assignment in July but it module be done by the expanse send gathering and not US shuttle astronauts.

After the final shuttle mission, the three satellite in the air fast and the image Enterprise module be dispatched to assorted museums crossways the country. Endeavour module be dispatched to California.

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