Plus: The Most Complete 3-D Map of the Local Universe and Your Ideas for a 100-Year Starship.

Endeavour Makes Final Return to Earth
NASA space shuttle Endeavour and its crew of six landed at the Kennedy Space Center for the last time on Wednesday after a 16-day mission to the International Space Station (ISS). The youngest of the shuttles made 248 orbits around Earth and traveled more than 6.5 million miles while delivering the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer-2 (AMS), a particle physics detector designed to search for various types of unusual matter by measuring cosmic rays.

“They’re getting great data from their instrument on board the space station,” Bill Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for Space Operations, said of the AMS. “It couldn’t have gone any better for this mission.”

Describing the astronauts’ parting view of the space station, STS-134 Mission Specialist Mike Fincke said after the landing: “We were impressed; we were excited like five-year-olds at a rollercoaster park.”

The STS-134 mission was the 25th and final flight for Endeavour, which spent a total of 299 days in space, orbited Earth 4,671 times and traveled nearly 122.9 miles. Only one other shuttle trip remains.

Before Endeavour‘s landing, Atlantis completed its 3.4-mile trek to the launch pad for the last-ever space shuttle launch, scheduled to take place on July 8. Endeavour is bound for the California Science Center in Los Angeles, and Atlantis will be displayed at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor’s Complex in Cape Canaveral after its last mission.

DARPA and NASA Want Ideas for 100-Year Starship
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) and NASA want to identify groups interested in working on a business model for a project that could someday enable long-term human settlement of the cosmos.

Its sights set on further exploring the outer reaches of space, the military’s research wing has now put out a Request for Information (RFI) seeking ideas for its awesome-sounding 100-Year Starship project:

DARPA is seeking ideas for an organization, business model and approach appropriate for a self-sustaining investment vehicle in support of the 100 Year Starship Study. The 100 Year Starship Study is a project seeded by DARPA to develop a viable and sustainable model for persistent, long-term, private-sector investment into the myriad of disciplines needed to make long-distance space travel practicable and feasible. The genesis of this study is to foster a rebirth of a sense of wonder among students, academia, industry, researchers and the general population to consider “why not” and to encourage them to tackle whole new classes of research and development related to all the issues surrounding long-duration, long-distance spaceflight. DARPA contends that the useful, unanticipated consequences of such research will have benefit to the Department of Defense and to NASA, and well as the private and commercial sector.

So, if any of our readers have ideas or information that address “long-term survivability over a century-long time horizon,” and clear descriptions of a proposal’s self-governance and self-sustainment prospects, please let DARPA know. Because how cool would that be?

Most Complete 3-D Map of Local Universe Unveiled
This week astronomers unveiled the most complete 3-D map of the local universe ever created. And it only took more than 10 years to create.

The 2MASS Redshift Survey, created by astronomers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, extends to 380 million light years. That’s the closest to the Galactic plane any map has ever gotten, The Daily What notes.

Click image for larger view.
Credit: T.H. Jarrett (IPAC/SSC)

Cheers.