Shuttle Cockpit

In this incredible photo by Ben Cooper, we see the highly sophisticated flight deck (cockpit) of the NASA space shuttle, Endeavour. This is just one of the amazing photos from Ben’s photo tour of the now decommissioned shuttle. Be sure to check out the rest of the series at Launch Photography where you can also see the thousands of signatures in the white room entrance of the Orbiter Processing Facility.

Endeavour was the fifth and final spaceworthy NASA space shuttle to be built, constructed as a replacement for Challenger, which was destroyed 73 seconds after its launch on January 28, 1986. Endeavour first flew in May 1992 on mission STS-49 and its last mission STS-134 was in May 2011.

Endeavour completed 25 total missions by 154 different crew members. It spent 296 days in space and made 4,671 orbits. It deployed 3 satellites and docked on Mir stations once and the ISS 12 times. It travelled a total distance of 122,883,141 miles (197,761,262 km). 

The orbiter is named after the British HMS Endeavour, the ship which took Captain James Cook on his first voyage of discovery (1768–1771).