© 2024 Kansas City Public Radio
NPR in Kansas City
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Shuttle Endeavour Is On Its Way To California

Space shuttle Endeavour, attached to a 747, on the tarmac at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Bill Ingalls/NASA
/
UPI /Landov
Space shuttle Endeavour, attached to a 747, on the tarmac at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Space shuttle Endeavour has taken off on its farewell tour across the country.

The third of the retired fleet of four to head off to a retirement home, Endeavour is being ferried from Florida to Los Angeles — with a stop on the way in Houston. It is perched atop a 747.

NASA TV is following Endeavour's journey here. NPR's Nell Greenfieldboyce previewed the trip Tuesday. As she reported, "along the way, the spaceship will stop off in Houston, home of NASA's Mission Control and, weather permitting, fly over NASA centers and various landmarks in cities that include San Francisco and Sacramento."

In mid-October, it will make a two-day, 1-mile-per-hour trip through city streets to the .

Space shuttle Discovery was flown to the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in the Northern Virginian suburbs of Washington, D.C., back in April, as we chronicled here. Later that same month, Enterprise was flown to New York City. It is now aboard the on the Hudson in Manhattan.

The last shuttle, Atlantis, will "make the shortest trip of all," as Nell reported. "It's staying in Florida, at the visitor center right next door to the Kennedy Space Center."

Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Mark Memmott is NPR's supervising senior editor for Standards & Practices. In that role, he's a resource for NPR's journalists – helping them raise the right questions as they do their work and uphold the organization's standards.
KCUR prides ourselves on bringing local journalism to the public without a paywall — ever.

Our reporting will always be free for you to read. But it's not free to produce.

As a nonprofit, we rely on your donations to keep operating and trying new things. If you value our work, consider becoming a member.