Endeavour

A solar starburst effect, dramatic cloud formations, and illuminated ocean provide a stunning natural backdrop to the Canadarm of space shuttle Endeavour.

Mission specialist Nancy Currie enters flight details in a logbook on Endeavour's flight deck during space station assembly flight STS-88. Among the missions many tasks was the delivery and assemblage of International Space Station components, followed by the connection of power- and data-transmission lines.

Endeavour (STS-99 mission) orbits the Earth with its payload the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM), part of which is silhouetted in the cargo bay.

Fifth of the US space shuttles. It made its first flight on 7 May 1992. Endeavour was built as a replacement for Challenger, destroyed in an explosion shortly after lift-off in 1986. It was used for the mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope in 1993 and for the first assembly of the International Space Station (ISS) in 1998 that connected the Unity module to the Zarya module, as well as five more trips to the ISS before the Columbia disaster in 2003. It made the last shuttle flight before that tragedy, being launched on 23 November 2002 to change the resident crews and install truss hardware. This was Endeavour's 19th flight. Its next flight was scheduled for June 2007, after a gap of over four years. Endeavour takes its name, with its British spelling, from the first ship to be commanded by the English naval explorer James Cook.