Atlantis will retire after returning from the shuttle program's final mission in July. Photo Credit/NASA photo
NASA Administrator Charles Bolden dispatched the agency’s retired shuttle orbiters far and wide on Tuesday, the 30th anniversary of the first shuttle flight and the 50th anniversary of the first human space flight.
Atlantis will head for the Kennedy Space Center Visitor’s complex when she returns from the 135th and final shuttle mission in mid-July.
Endeavour, which is scheduled to lift off on her 25th and final mission on April 29, will retire to the California Science Center in Los Angeles, Calif., not far from the Rockwell International facilities where each of the orbiters was assembled.
Endeavour's last mission headed for a late April lift off. Photo Credit/NASA photo
As expected, Discovery will go to the Smithsonian Institution’s Air & Space Museum and specifically the Stephen F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Virginia.
Discovery’s new home will free Enterprise to leave the Smithsonian’s custody for the Sea, Air and Space Museum aboard the aircraft carrier Intrepid in New York. Intrepid’s sailors recovered NASA Mercury and Gemini crews from the ocean waters in the 1960s.
Enterprise, named for the famed star ship of the Star Trek television series, never flew in space. But the spacecraft was a crucial part of the demonstrating the orbiter’s aerodynamics during the approach and landing phases of flight.
Discovery returned from final mission in March. Photo Credit/NASA photo
“There were many, many wonderful institutions that requested an orbiter and only four to go around,” Bolden announced during an emotional ceremony marking the 30th anniversary Tuesday of NASA’s first space shuttle mission at the Kennedy Space Center. “Many of the applicant institutions that did not receive an orbiter will receive significant shuttle hardware and artifacts to help bring this dynamic chapter of our nation’s space history for their many visitors.”
The decision on where to send the venerable orbiters was obviously a difficult one for the administrator, who paused during the applause that greeted his announcement to keep Atlantis in Florida.
“You have no idea what a rough day it’s been,” he told a gathering that included Kennedy’s director, Bob Cabana, and Robert Crippen, who piloted the first shuttle mission along side John Young, the Apollo and Gemini astronaut.
The agency plans to direct various shuttle simulators to the Adler Planetarium in Chicago, the Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum of McMinnville, Ore., and Texas A&M University’s Aerospace Engineering Department
The Museum of Flight in Seattle will receive a full fuselage shuttle trainer.
A Nose cap assembly and crew compartment trainer will head for the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, which was considered a strong contender for one of the orbiters.