edpaffjr.comOne of the last space shuttle missions ever could happen today. That is if it isn’t scrubbed like the first five launch attempts. According to the list of space shuttle launches this is the 8th last shuttle mission. The final mission is scheduled for September 16, 2010. The goal is to have the International Space Station completed at that time. The shuttle will then be retired and eventually replaced by the new Orion spacecraft.
Anyway, I’m getting sidetracked. One of the astronauts on this mission, Commander Mark Polansky, has been posting updated on his twitter account and will continue doing so from space. This will not be the first time this has happened, as Mike Massimino also was updating his twitter account on the previous shuttle mission. I later read that the updates are not actually real time, the messages are sent down to earth where the are later posted, but it’s still pretty cool nonetheless. I will definitely be tuned to NASA TV at 6:03 PM EDT for the launch.
In other NASA news, tomorrow is the 40th anniversary of the launch of Apollo 11. This mission placed the first men onto the surface of the moon. An amazing slide show of pictures from the mission can be seen at this link.