By the Numbers: Space Shuttle Endeavour Set To Launch

At this posting, everything is a go for the last flight of the Endeavour and the next-to-last liftoff for America’s 30-year-old Space Shuttle program, which can be watched live on your computer.

Here’s five quick things to know:

• This is the 134th launch of the Space Shuttle program, the 25th launch of Endeavour, NASA’s youngest orbiter, and the 36th flight to the International Space Center.

• The Endeavour STS-134 mission has four planned space walks. These are the last scheduled space walks for the remainder of the Space Shuttle program.

• Six crew members are set to blast off today, May 16, at 8:56 a.m.: Commander Mark Kelly, commander; pilot Gregory H. Johnson; and mission specialists Michael Fincke, Greg Chamitoff, Andrew Feustel and Robert Vittori, an astronaut from the European Space Agency.

• The Endeavour originally was scheduled to blast off in November. The latest attempt, April 29, was scrubbed because of problems with heaters in one of the shuttle’s power units.

• During its 16-day mission the crew will deliver to the International Space Station the $2 billion Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, a particle physics detector designed to search for various typs of unusal matter by measuring cosmic rays. Its experiments are deisnged to help researchers study and look for clues to the formation of the universe.