Space shuttle Endeavour touches down
| EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif.
The space shuttle Endeavour, carried piggyback atop a jumbo jet, landed 补迟听Edwards Air Force Base听颈苍听California聽on Thursday at the tail end of a cross-country trip to Los Angeles to begin its final mission as a museum exhibit.
The specially modified聽Boeing 747聽with the newly retired spaceship perched on its back touched down safely at 12:50 p.m. local time (3:50 p.m. EDT) at Edwards, about 100 miles (160 km) north of Los Angeles in the Mojave Desert.
NASA retired its shuttle fleet last year after completing the U.S. portion of the $100 billion International Space Station, a permanently staffed research complex that is owned by 15 nations and orbits about 250 miles (400 km) above Earth.
Endeavour embarked on its last cross-county "ferry" journey on Wednesday from聽Cape Canaveral,听Florida, and made several low-altitude passes over NASA centers in聽Mississippi,听Louisiana聽and聽Texas聽before stopping for the night at Ellington Field near the聽Johnson Space Center in Houston.
The trip resumed early on Thursday, with Endeavour聽and its carrier jet making additional flyovers - one over聽Tucson,听Arizona, in a salute to former Congresswoman聽Gabrielle Giffords聽and her husband,听Mark Kelly, the retired astronaut who commanded Endeavour's final flight on his last mission in late May 2011.
Giffords, still recuperating from a gunshot wound to the head suffered in an attempt on her life last year, watched the flyover from the roof of a聽Tucson聽parking garage with her husband and mother, according to former aide聽C.J. Karamargin, who joined them.
"When it came into view, Mark said, 'There's my plane!'" Karamargin recounted. "Gabby was just elated, hooting and hollering like the rest of us were."
From聽Arizona,听Endeavour and its carrier jet flew on to聽California, where the spacecraft was built two decades ago, for the landing 补迟听Edwards Air Force Base.
The sprawling installation used to serve as the primary landing site for NASA's shuttle program before the space agency built a landing facility for the orbiters at the Kennedy Space Center in聽Florida. Edwards then became the principal backup landing spot for shuttles in case of bad weather at Cape Canaveral.
Endeavour made seven landings at Edwards during its active tenure at NASA, most recently in November 2008.
Final flight聽
The shuttle was scheduled to depart Edwards on Friday for its very last ferry flight, and the final airborne journey of the entire space shuttle fleet, headed for Los Angeles International Airport.
The 75-ton (68-tonne) winged spacecraft will then undergo preparations to be moved next month through city streets from the airport to its permanent home at the聽California聽Science Center in downtown Los Angeles, where the shuttle will be put on public display starting Oct. 30.
To make way for the mammoth orbiter along its 12-mile (19 km) route to the museum, crews are cutting down nearly 400 trees, raising overhead utility wires and temporarily removing hundreds of utility poles, street lights and traffic signals. The science center has agreed to plant 1,000 new trees to replace those slated for removal.
Endeavour was built as a replacement for Challenger, the shuttle lost in a 1986 launch accident that killed seven astronauts. It went on to fly 25 missions, including 12 to build and outfit the space station, and logged nearly 123 million miles (198 million km) in flight during 4,671 orbits.
Endeavour is the second of NASA's three surviving shuttles to be sent to a museum. Discovery, NASA's oldest surviving shuttle, is on display at the Smithsonian Institution's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center outside Washington.
Atlantis, which flew NASA's 135th and final shuttle mission in July 2011, will be towed down the road to the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in November.
NASA lost a fourth shuttle, Columbia, in another fatal accident in 2003. That shuttle was not replaced. A shuttle test vehicle, Enterprise, which has never flown in space, was delivered to a New York聽City museum.
On its way from Edwards to the聽Los Angeles airport, Endeavour聽will soar atop its carrier jet on several last victory laps over聽California, including flyovers above聽San Francisco,听Sacramento, Hollywood and even Disneyland 补迟听Anaheim. The spaceship is expected to arrive at LAX sometime before noon local time.
(Reporting by Steve Gorman and Tim Gaynor; Writing by Steve Gorman; Editing by Cynthia Johnston and Sandra Maler)
