Saturday, September 29, 2012

Endeavour was brought to Los Angeles

From TV news on September 22, (September 21, US), I learned that the space shuttle, Endeavour (奮進號) was carried by a jumbo 747 to Los Angeles International Airport and it will soon be brought to California Science Centre for display. It was an amazing flight around the city, which attracted a lot of citizens to watch it fly across the sky.


Here is an extract from Wikipedia:

Endeavour completed its final mission with a landing at the Kennedy Space Center at 06:34 UTC on June 1, 2011. Over its flight career, Endeavour flew 122,853,151 miles and spent 299 days in space. While flying Endeavour's last mission, the Russian spacecraft Soyuz TMA-20 departed from the ISS and paused at a distance of 200 meters. Italian astronaut Paolo Nespoli took a series of photographs and videos of the ISS with Endeavour docked. This was the second time a Shuttle had been photographed while docked and the first time since 1996. Commander Mark Kelly was the last astronaut off Endeavour after the landing, and the crew stayed on the landing strip long enough to sign autographs and pose for pictures. With commander Mark Kelly and pilot Gregory Johnson at the controls, Endeavour's touchdown was the 25th time a shuttle performed a night landing.

One final mission, STS-135, was added to the schedule in January 2011, and Atlantis flew for the last time in July 2011.

NASA offered the three remaining orbiters for museum donation once they are withdrawn from service. After more than twenty organizations submitted proposals to NASA for the display of an orbiter, NASA announced that Enterprise (企業號) will go to New York's Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum, Discovery (發現號) will go the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center of the National Air and Space Museum, Atlantis (亞特蘭蒂斯號) will remain in the Visitor Complex at Kennedy Space Center, and Endeavour (奮進號) will go to the California Science Center in Los Angeles. It was finally delivered to Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) on September 21 2012. Soon, it will be moved along the streets of Los Angeles (La Tijera, Manchester, Crenshaw, and Martin Luther King Jr. boulevards) to its final destination at the California Science Center.

3 comments:

psng said...

I was at work and missed the low fly-over in the SF-Bay Area. I would love to see it next time in LA.

sswat3 said...

Peter, the plane with the space-shuttle flied over Hollywood and landed at Los Angeles International Airport!

Ho Keung and Yin Ping said...

Amazing piggyback photos!