The US space shuttle Endeavour and its crew of six astronauts are preparing for a weekend mission to deliver a space module dubbed Tranquility to the International Space Station (ISS).
…The mission comes as NASA begins to reevaluate its future after President Barack Obama effectively abandoned the US space agency’s plan to send astronauts back to the moon by 2020.
The Constellation program was intended to develop a successor spacecraft to the shuttle, which could be used to carry astronauts to the moon where they would use a lunar base to launch manned missions to Mars.
Constrained by soaring budget deficits, Obama submitted a budget to Congress that encourages the agency to instead focus on developing commercial transport alternatives to ferry astronauts to the ISS after the shuttle program ends.
There are just five missions scheduled for NASA’s three shuttles before the program is scheduled to wind down later this year. The first shuttle launch was in 1981.
The Endeavour mission’s main goal is the delivery of the Tranquility module, also known as Node 3, which comes with a multi-window cupola attached.
The cupola, built for NASA by the European group Thales Alenia Space in their…
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US shuttle to bring Tranquility to space station
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