Barack Obama will pop down to Kennedy Space Center for next week's launch of space shuttle Endeavour, Reuters reports [1].

The president may be joined by Gabrielle Giffords, wife of Endeavour commander Mark Kelly. She's still recovering from the head wound she received in the 8 January Tuscon shooting [2], and doctors will need to give final approval if she's to wave her hubby off on the STS-134 [3] mission to the International Space Station.

Endeavour's swansong flight, due to begin on 29 April at 19:47 GMT, will deliver the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer [4] to the orbiting outpost. Once its 25th mission wraps, the veteran vehicle will go on display at the California Science Center in Los Angeles.

Discovery, which bowed out [5] on 9 March after completing 39 missions, is destined for the Udvar-Hazy Center at the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum, in Virginia.

The last pencilled shuttle launch is that of Atlantis, slated for 28 June. After a final visit [6] to the ISS, it will find a home at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex. ®

Links

1. http://uk.reuters.com/article/2011/04/20/us-space-shuttle-obama-idUKTRE73J6G920110420
2. http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/01/08/us-usa-shooting-congresswoman-idUSTRE7071IA20110108
3. http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/shuttlemissions/sts134/index.html
4. http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/AMS-02.html#description
5. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/09/discovery_landing/
6. http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/shuttlemissions/sts135/index.html

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