The Space Shuttle Endeavour launched for the sky for the last time 15 days ago. Trey Ratcliff scoped an inspiring shot of Endeavour worm-holing into the clouds. Stefanie Gordon with her handy futurephone caught the awesome sight of Endeavour blasting free from the top layer of clouds and shared with the world. And NASA shared a shot of their own from a shuttle training aircraft. You can watch a video of the launch here.

Endeavour returns to Earth Wednesday June 1, 2011.

Trey Ratcliff’s Dream of Endeavour

Even though I had my Nikon D3X set up on a tripod with my 28-300 lens, I actually shot this picture with my 50mm prime lens on my Nikon D3S! Everything did go according to plan, and I had run through the routine a few times before the launch. The plan was to fire away on my main body during the first 15 seconds or so. At that point, the D3X starts to have bufferring problems, so I switched to my Chewbacca-bandolier D3S. I pulled it up into a vertical orientation and rapid-fired just as the shuttle tore into the clouds.

As soon as the Endeavour worm-holed into the cloud layer, the strange staccato-bass of torn air came skipping across the water into the press area. The sound was not at all what I expected, but it was awesome dot com.

Stefanie Gordon’s Space Shuttle Twitpic

APOD’s Space Shuttle Rising Tribute

If you looked out the window of an airplane at just the right place and time last week, you could have seen something very unusual — the space shuttle Endeavour launching to orbit. Images of the rising shuttle and its plume became widely circulated over the web shortly after Endeavour’s final launch.