Endeavor is about to fly for the last time

The US Aeronautics Agency (NASA) announced the last flight of the Space Shuttle Endeavor will take place today.

Endeavor is located on the launch pad of 39A in Kennedy Space Center, Florida State, USA on May 15. Photo: AP.

Endeavor will be launched at the International Space Station at 8:56 (19h56 Vietnamese time), AFP said. The flight will take place in 16 days. Allard Beutel, a NASA spokesman, said the probability of the flight was delayed by 30% of bad weather.

"The weather information we updated on May 15 shows that the ability of good weather on May 16 to reach 70%," AFP quoted him as saying.

This is the 25th flight of the shuttle Endeavor . After this flight it will "retire" and be taken to a museum in California, USA.

NASA intends to make Endeavor's last flight on April 29. But just hours before the launch, the engineers discovered a technical problem in the electrical system that could cause fuel to enter a frozen state when the ship flew into space. So the flight was delayed.

Five American astronauts and an Italian astronaut will board Endeavor to fly to the International Space Station . The ship carries a detector of antimatter particles worth $ 2 billion. Astronauts will make four space walks.

AP said the congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords - who was shot while meeting in Tucson, Arizona, in January - was one of the guests who witnessed the Endeavor taking off. Her husband, astronaut Mark Kelly, was the crew commander on the ship Endeavor.

According to the chronological order, Endeavor is the fifth ship in the US shuttle fleet. It flew for the first time in May 1992 . Since then it has risen to space 24 times. After Endeavor stops flying, Atlantis will be the only US space shuttle operating.

After the explosion of the Columbia shuttle in 2003, the accident investigation committee concluded that the US government must produce a new generation of spacecraft as soon as possible to replace the shuttle fleet. In 2004, US President George W. Bush ordered the production of a new generation of spacecraft to bring astronauts back to the moon before flying to Mars. To achieve this goal, NASA will have to stop investing in space shuttles (investments of up to four billion dollars each year).

But when Barack Obama became president, he canceled his goal back to the moon, and asked NASA to build a large rocket to take astronauts to a meteorite before conquering Mars. Under Mr. Obama's plan, private companies will take charge of transporting people and goods to the International Space Station .