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| Space shuttle Endeavour heads off to begin new life as museum exhibit | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: 19 Sep 2012, 03:28 PM (29 Views) | |
| Audi-Tek | 19 Sep 2012, 03:28 PM Post #1 |
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Space shuttle Endeavour heads off to begin new life as museum exhibit.![]() The US Space shuttle Endeavour atop Nasa's shuttle carrier aircraft in Cape Canaveral, Florida. Photograph: Bill Ingalls/AFP/Getty Images Riding piggyback atop a 747 jet, the space shuttle Endeavour left its Florida home for the last time, heading to California to begin a new mission as a museum exhibit. After waiting two days for the weather to clear, the modified carrier jet sped down the runway shortly after dawn on Wednesday on the first leg of a planned three-day trek to the US west coast. "There's sadness to see it go, but the space shuttle programme had to end for us to move on to the next thing," said astronaut Greg Chamitoff. Nasa retired its three-ship fleet last year after completing the US portion of the $100bn International Space Station, a permanently staffed research complex that flies about 250 miles above Earth. The agency is developing a new spaceship and rocket that can fly astronauts to the moon, asteroids and eventually to Mars. Russia now flies Nasa astronauts to the station, at a cost of more than $65m a seat. Nasa hopes to buy rides from commercial companies from 2017. Endeavour was built as a replacement ship 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. It flew the first assembly mission, carrying up the Unity connecting node, which was attached to the Russian Zarya base module. "It's hard to believe it was 14 years ago," said Bob Cabana, the director of Kennedy Space Centre and a former astronaut who commanded Nasa's first station assembly flight in 1998. 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 Centre outside Washington DC. Atlantis, which flew Nasa's 135th and final shuttle mission in July 2011, will be towed down the road to the Kennedy Space Centre Visitor Complex in November. Endeavour will finish its journey at the California Science Centre in Los Angeles. Source ...........
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8:08 PM Jul 11