Endeavour Does The Fast-Gear-Drop For The Last Time (2 Videos)

 The end of the line for Shuttle Endeavour was reached at 2:35am eastern time this morning with a landing in darkness at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The video above gives you a great view of a beautiful landing... and remember, the fire flashes seen near the vertical stabilizer are from one of the auxiliary power units as it does a controlled burn-off of the highly toxic and dangerously unstable hydrazine fuel that powers them. It's all completely normal.

 This last-ever mission for Endeavour, STS-134, was a very successful final mission for the youngest of all of the Shuttles, and it leaves us just one final mission in the Shuttle Program: STS-135 with Atlantis, currently scheduled for launch on July 8, 2011.

 You probably know I like to take a little different look at the way things tick in the world of aviation/aerospace, and I found a video to help me with an interesting point with Endeavour's landing gear. It all starts with the fact that the shuttles are one of the few aircraft to takeoff with their landing gear up, but then extend it for landing. And if you've been paying attention, the shuttles extend their gear pretty fast. I never really gave the retraction side of the gear much thought until I watched the video below. There's not enough info with the video to know if the gear typically fights the force of gravity in such a lazy manner, but really, there's no need for it to go up in a hurry anyway. 

 And it's true, watching a main gear leg retract and the door close behind it for over a minute and a half isn't exactly exciting, but I'm enough of a geek to really enjoy it. If you get bored and wanna bail, hop over and check out the CoolPix I posted from back in February 2010 when Endeavour made another night landing... it's very cool stuff. 

 Welcome home Endeavour, you've served US well.

Got a minute and a half?  Endeavour main gear retraction