Space Shuttle Endeavour ends last mission

Space Shuttle Endeavour has touched down safely at the Kennedy Space Center at 2:34 a.m. ET, ending its last mission.

Endeavour's STS-134 mission was originally supposed to be the final mission of the Space Shuttle program, but the STS-135 mission was approved in October 2010, and now Atlantis will be the final Space Shuttle to fly into space.

According to NASA, Endeavour has spent 299 days in space, orbited Earth 4,671 times and traveled 122,883,151 miles on its 25 flights, according to  Mashable.

After 19 years of operation, the US space shuttle will be retired along with the rest of Nasa's shuttle mission which is terminating later this year.

Endeavour is the youngest of the space flying fleet, which also includes Discovery and Atlantis.

With Discovery already retired after returning from its final mission in March, Atlantis will be the last US shuttle to launch from the Kennedy Space Center in July.

After the shuttle era, the world's astronauts will rely on Russia's space capsules for transit to the orbiting lab at a cost of $51 million (£31 million) per seat until a new US crew vehicle can be built by private enterprise.

Nasa has estimated that a shuttle replacement could be expected sometime between 2015 and 2021, says Telegraph.co.uk.