Shuttle Endeavour Countdown to the Final Five Begins

Rollout of Endeavour atop mobile launch platform. Credit: Ken Kremer

Space Shuttle Endeavour was rolled out to its seaside launch pad on(Jan. 6) at the Kennedy Space Center, officially starting the clock for the ‘Final Five’ flights. These five will close out the Space Shuttle era forever by the end of 2010 or early 2011 unless the program is extended for a few missions by President Obama.

I was totally thrilled to witness the trek first hand from just yards away as central Florida was gripped by a rare and truly ‘bone chilling’ cold snap. Endeavour was bolted atop the mobile launch platform (MLP) and hauled out to the pad at about 0.5 MPH by the giant crawler-transporter which dates back to the Apollo moon landing Era of the 1960’s. Click to continue…