The Mary Rose to sail into space with the final Endeavour Mission
NEWSFLASH! Space shuttle Endeavour and its crew of six astronauts launched Monday at 13:56 p.m. BST. Watch the video here:
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/videogallery/index.html?collection_id=14554&media_id=88591351
Endeavour (STS-134’s) 14-day mission to the International Space Station will be carrying some very special cargo…
At a gala dinner for Portsmouth Festivities last June, The Mary Rose Trust in Portsmouth Historic Dockyard presented the crew of the Atlantis Space Shuttle with an artefact of the Mary Rose, the flagship of King Henry VIII, with a view to sending it up to space on a future mission.
Now this 3-inch wooden ball from the 16th century warship will be on-board Endeavour, so it can sail in the vast ocean of space. The ball, called a "parrel," was part of the mechanism used to raise sails up the masts.
John Lippiett, Chief Executive of the Mary Rose Trust, who made the presentation to the astronauts, commented: “It was really tremendous to have the opportunity to present this little piece of the Mary Rose to the visiting Shuttle crew to take back to Houston, and we are thrilled that she will be making history once more on the final mission for Endeavour.
The Mary Rose was as revolutionary in technological advances 500 years ago as the Space Shuttle was in the early 1980s. Both have helped pioneer exploration and advance the sciences. It is most appropriate to mark their place in history in this manner.”
The Mary Rose has one more connection to NASA: astronaut Michael Foale worked as a volunteer diver on the ship's excavation in 1981. The astronaut would later fly the space shuttle, to the Russian space station Mir and to the International Space Station.
The objects continue a tradition of taking items into space that began with NASA''s first astronauts. During the 50 years of astronauts launching into space, commemorative objects have flown to the moon''s surface and made repeated orbits of Earth, returning later to inspire those who could not make the trip themselves and remind astronauts of their accomplishments.
The Mary Rose sank in 1545 in the Battle of the Solent. She was raised in 1982 with her artefact collection of 19,000 objects presenting a unique time capsule and one of the world’s most precious heritage icons.
The Mary Rose 500 Appeal are currently fundraising to secure the building of the new Mary Rose Museum to open in Autumn 2012, which will reunite the hull with her artefacts and ensure completion of the conservation in 2016 providing visitors with new and unique views of the vessel - visit www.maryrose500.org
