APOD 4.7

For this week's APOD, I chose the picture called The Last Launch of Space Shuttle Endeavor, uploaded on May 18. Four days ago was the last trip into Earth's orbit for the Space Shuttle Endeavor.  This picture was taken only moments after the initial liftoff, as the six astronauts inside prepare to reach new heights, ones in which the atmosphere is so thin that it is unbreathable.


There is only one more trip for any space shuttles in the U.S., which will take off from Atlantis in mid-July.The mission that this particular shuttle is on is called STS-134.  It docked with the International Space Station on May 18, 2011. The mission taking off in mid-July will also dock with the space station.  The Endeavor will deliver many things to the International Space Station, including a detector which is named the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer.  The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer is at the Johnson Space Center Project Office.  Its mission is to use the unique environment of space to enhance knowledge of the universe and, hopefully, lead to the understanding of it's origin.  It is a high profile space-based particle physics experiment, which is led by Nobel Laureate Samuel Ting of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The detector's job is to, over time, recognize a good amount of certain types of dark matter, charged antimatter, and strangelets.  Strangelets are small, unique interesting pieces of matter, which have electrons orbiting the strangelet, instead of being found within the strangelet.