The museum-bound Endeavour, the youngest of the shuttles, logged nearly 123 million miles over 25 spaceflights.

“Your landing ends a vibrant legacy for this amazing vehicle that will long be remembered. Welcome home, Endeavour,” Mission Control told Kelly and his crewmates, who wrapped up U.S. construction at the International Space Station.

“It’s sad to see her land for the last time,” Kelly replied, “but she really has a great legacy.”

A considerably larger crowd gathered a few hours earlier to see Atlantis make its way to the launch pad, the last such trek ever by a shuttle. Thousands of Kennedy Space Center workers and their families lined the route Tuesday night as Atlantis crept out of the mammoth Vehicle Assembly Building a little after sunset, bathed in xenon lights.

“The show pretty much tells itself,” Atlantis’ commander, Christopher Ferguson, said as he waved toward his ship. “We’re going to look upon this final mission as a celebration of all that the space shuttle has accomplished over its 30-year life span.”

Bright lights also illuminated the landing strip for Kelly, who made the 25th night landing out of a total of 134 shuttle flights.

The Endeavour astronauts — all experienced spacemen — departed the 220-mile-high outpost over the weekend. They installed a $2 billion cosmic ray detector, an extension beam and a platform full of spare parts, enough to keep the station operating in the shuttle-less decade ahead.

Their flight lasted 16 days and completed NASA’s role in the space station construction effort that began 12 years ago.

The official tally for Endeavour was 170 crew members, 299 days in space, 4,671 orbits of Earth and 122,883,151 miles.

Kelly was the last astronaut to exit Endeavour. He and his crew posed for pictures and signed autographs on the runway. Astronaut Gregory Chamitoff was so wobbly from weightlessness that he had to be supported by two colleagues.

“It’s great to bring Endeavour back in great shape. It looks like it’s ready to go do another mission,” Kelly said.

As Kelly thanked his crewmates for their flawless performance, co-pilot Gregory Johnson leaned over to shout into the mike, “And our commander, we want to thank him, too.” Johnson and the rest of the crew were openly supportive, over the months, about Kelly’s decision to stick with the flight, despite his wife’s serious injury.

Giffords was shot in the head during a mass shooting in Tucson, Ariz., in January, but made a remarkable recovery and was able to attend the May 16 launch. The congresswoman did not travel to Florida for the landing because of the inconvenient hour, but Kelly’s two teenage daughters were on hand, along with his twin brother, Scott, who is also an astronaut.

Giffords and Kelly will reunite in Houston on Thursday.

Their flight lasted 16 days and, with a series of four spacewalks, completed NASA’s role in the space station construction effort that began more than 12 years ago. They were the last spacewalks to be conducted by a shuttle crew. One of the spacewalking astronauts, Mike Fincke, set a U.S. career record of 382 days in space.

Endeavour is the second shuttle to be retired. It ultimately will be put at the California Science Center in Los Angeles.

Built to replace the destroyed Challenger, Endeavour first soared in 1992 on a satellite-rescue mission that saw a record-setting three spacewalkers grab the wayward craft. Other highlights for the baby of the fleet: the first repair mission to the Hubble Space Telescope in 1993, to fix its blurred vision, and NASA’s first flight to assemble the space station in 1998.

Atlantis will remain at Kennedy Space Center as a tourist stop, following one last supply run to the space station. Liftoff is set for July 8.

Discovery, the fleet leader, returned from its final voyage in March. Its next stop is a Smithsonian Institution hangar outside Washington.

NASA is leaving the Earth-to-orbit business behind to focus on expeditions to asteroids and Mars. Private companies hope to pick up the slack for cargo and crew hauls to the space station. But it will be a while following Atlantis’ upcoming flight — at least three years, by one business’ estimate — before astronauts ride on American rockets again.

Until then, Americans will continue hitching rides aboard Russian Soyuz capsules at the cost of tens of millions of dollars a seat.

“We’re in the process of transition now, and it’s going to be awkward,” said Atlantis astronaut Rex Walheim. “But we’ll get to the other side and we’ll have new vehicles.

“I really do have to say, though, it’s going to be really hard to beat a vehicle that is so beautiful and majestic as that one is,” he said as Atlantis rolled to the pad behind him. “I mean, how can you beat that? An airplane sitting on the side of a rocket. It’s absolutely stunning.”

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Online:

NASA: http://www.nasa.gov/mission–pages/shuttle/main/index.html

Loughner was later brought back into the courtroom, and the judged told him he had a right to watch the hearing. Burns asked Loughner if he wanted to stay in the courtroom and behave or view the proceeding on a screen in another room.

Loughner responded: “I want to watch the TV screen.”

At least two survivors of the Jan. 8 attack looked on: Giffords aide Pam Simon, who was shot in the chest and right wrist; and retired Army Col. Bill Badger, who is credited with helping subdue Loughner after a bullet grazed the back of Badger’s head.

The ruling came after Loughner spent five weeks in March and April at a federal facility in Springfield, Mo., where he was examined by two court-appointed mental health professionals. The two were asked to determine whether Loughner understands the consequences of the case against him.

The competency reports by psychologist Christina Pietz and psychiatrist Matthew Carroll haven’t been publicly released.

Loughner has pleaded not guilty to 49 federal charges stemming from the Jan. 8 shooting at a meet-and-greet event that wounded Giffords and 12 others and killed six people, including a 9-year-old girl and a federal judge.

Prosecutors had asked for the mental exam, citing a YouTube video in which they believe a hooded Loughner wore garbage bags and burned an American flag.

The judge gave the two mental health professionals access to Loughner’s health records from his pediatrician, a behavioral health hospital that treated him for extreme intoxication in May 2006 and an urgent care center where he was treated in 2004 for unknown reasons.

Loughner will be sent to a federal facility for a maximum of four months to see if his competency can be restored. If he’s later determined to be competent, the case against him will resume.

If he isn’t deemed competent at the end of his treatment, his stay at the facility can be extended. There are no limits on the number of times such extensions can be granted.

If doctors conclude they can’t restore his mental competency, the judge would have to decide whether the suspect can be restored. If the judge decides there’s no likelihood of restoration, the judge can dismiss the charges against him. In that case, state and federal authorities can petition to have him civilly committed and could seek to extend that commitment repeatedly, said Heather Williams, a federal public defender in Tucson who isn’t involved in the Loughner case.

The doctors who examined Loughner were ordered not to focus on his sanity at the time of the shooting.

Loughner’s lawyers haven’t said whether they intend to present an insanity defense. But they noted in court filings that his mental condition will likely be a central issue at trial and described him as a “gravely mentally ill man.”

Since the assassination attempt in her Tucson, Ariz., hometown, Giffords has been shielded from public view: during her two weeks in intensive care, her transfer to Houston, and the weeks since at a rehab hospital. Her doctors last spoke publicly about her progress in early March, and the only recent details have come from select interviews granted by her husband, staff, and those caring for her.

The night before launch, Kelly bid Giffords goodbye at the exclusive beachfront house the crew uses before launch.

Her doctors say she has made “leaps and bounds” in what will be a long recovery. The bullet pierced the left side of Giffords’ brain, thus affecting speech and movement on her right side. The Arizona Republic reported last month that she was speaking mostly in single words or declarative phrases, could stand and walk on her own, pushing a grocery cart through the rehab center’s hall as therapy.

“Her personality’s 100 percent there,’ Kelly told CBS News. “You know it’s difficult for her to walk. The communication skills are difficult at this point.”

No photos of Giffords have been seen. According to the Arizona newspaper, her hair is short and there’s a thin scar across her forehead. She wears a helmet to protect her head; a piece of her skull was removed to allow for swelling. A grainy TV video purportedly showed her slowly going up stairs of a small airplane to fly to Cape Canaveral for her husband’s first launch attempt last month.

The tragic event that catapulted the relatively unknown congresswoman and anonymous astronaut into America’s sweethearts, Gabby and Mark, came a few days after the Democrat started her third term in Congress.

At a routine meet-and-greet with constituents outside a supermarket, a gunman opened fire, killing six people and wounding Giffords and 12 others in the crowd. A 22-year-old suspect faces 49 federal charges and a mental competency hearing.

The odds said she wouldn’t make it, but she did. After brain surgery and two weeks in intensive care, she was taken to Houston where her husband lives and trains. The odds suggested Kelly couldn’t continue with his shuttle mission, but he did. Four weeks after the shooting, he said he would fly.

Might Giffords be well enough to attend his launch — as she had twice before?

“Absolutely. I have every intention that she’ll be there for the launch,” he told reporters in February.

While she was in daily rehab, he resumed training, visiting her before and after work. In a way, their days were similarly filled with intense and repetitive drills. She was told about the shooting — which she doesn’t remember — and the deaths, but not all the details.

By the end of April, doctors said Giffords was doing well enough to fly to Florida — but the shuttle was grounded hours before liftoff.

When NASA was ready to try again, Giffords was there. Again. This time the hard work, the preparations — both for NASA and Giffords — paid off with a thunderous launch.

Monday’s launch also means Kelly will be home in Houston after the 16-day mission just in time for Giffords’ 41st birthday on June 8.

Giffords, who is on the House committee that oversees NASA, had an interest in space issues before she met Kelly on a trip to China in 2003 when she was serving in the Arizona Legislature. They were married in 2007 after a long-distance romance. She attended his launches in 2006 and 2008.

As is custom, Giffords will again pick wake-up music for Kelly at least once while he’s in orbit, maybe more. Previously, she selected “Beautiful Day” from U2.

At his last liftoff, she told The Associated Press that she was happy, excited and worried all at the same time. “It’s a risky job,” she said. Only when the shuttle has returned to Earth “you can sort of exhale and relax and know that your loved one’s safe.”

Right after that launch, she was presented with red roses and a card from her husband.

Giffords, traveling on a NASA jet with the family of pilot Gregory Johnson, arrived shortly after the protective structure that surrounds Endeavour was moved out of the way — a milestone in launch preparations that allows fueling to begin late Sunday night.

NASA was so ready to get the flight off the ground that they moved the protective scaffolding 15 minutes earlier than planned.

There was only a 30 percent chance of a weather delay, mostly because of crosswinds.

The conditions were far different from last month’s futile launch attempt. The protective cover wasn’t removed for five hours because of storms, and the launch was scrubbed because of an electrical problem.

NASA is expecting slightly smaller crowds — 400,000 people instead of 750,000 people — for the second attempt. The media horde is also slightly thinned — even though the April attempt was on the same day as the royal wedding — but includes television anchors such as Katie Couric of CBS, said NASA spokesman Bob Jacobs.

With the story of Giffords remarkable recovery from the January shooting having been the focus of media attention in April, now more people are paying attention to the other parts of Endeavour’s planned 16-day mission. The shuttle’s main goal is to haul a $2 billion astronomy and physics experiment to the international space station.

This is also the next to last flight for the 30-year-old space shuttle fleet. And it is the final flight of the shuttle Endeavour, NASA’s youngest orbiter, which has flown 116.4 million miles in 24 previous flights.

Giffords was wounded in the face in mass shooting in January that killed six people. Doctors have cleared her to travel to see the launch. She came for the April attempt, flew back to Houston to resume her rehabilitation work and even had dinner out with her husband.