This morning the Space Shuttle Endeavour landed safely at the end of its last mission. It was the last of 25 missions which included several activities related to the International Space Station, scientific experiments and also a service mission to the Hubble Space Telescope.

On May 5, 1961 Alan Shepard became the first American to make a space flight on the spacecraft Freedom 7. Today that mission is celebrated with a stamp.

On April 12, 1981, Columbia took off for the first space mission of a Space Shuttle. Columbia was the second Space Shuttle built after the prototype Enterprise, which however never flew. Because of some of its design features Columbia was never used for missions that included docking at the space station Mir or the International Space Station, unlike the other Space Shuttles.

In the morning of April 12, 1961 the Vostok 1 took off, went into orbit and after travelling around the world Yuri Gagarin began re-entry procedures. The service module had to come off but some of the cables kept it attached to the rest of the ship for a bit longer than expected before breaking. During the landing Gagarin ejected and opened his parachute while the Vostok service module landed with its own parachute.

After the return to Earth that took place yesterday the Space Shuttle Discovery has been retired. At the end of this mission the Space Shuttle Discovery has flown nearly 150 million miles during 39 flights for a total of 5,247 orbits in 322 days divided over 27 years of distinguished service and in this case it’s not just rhetoric. With these numbers the Discovery is the spaceship that was used the most.