After several delays, space shuttle Endeavour mounted on top NASA’s Shuttle Carrier Aircraft (SCA) made the final ferry flight Wednesday, bound for Los Angeles, with a stop in Houston.
The SCA with Endeavour landed at Houston’s Ellington Field just after 10:30 a.m., and will remain there for one night. The aircraft will depart Houston at dawn on Thursday and make a fueling stop at Biggs Army Air Field in El Paso before proceeding to Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base in California.
On Friday it will depart Dryden for a flyover of northern California and areas of the Los Angeles basin before landing at LAX between 11 a.m. and noon PDT.
In October, Endeavour will move to the California Science Center to begin a new mission inspiring future explorers.
NASA’s space shuttle fleet began setting records with its first launch on April 12, 1981 and continued to set high marks of achievement and endurance through 30 years of missions. Starting with Columbia and continuing with Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour, the spacecraft has carried people into orbit repeatedly, launched, recovered and repaired satellites, conducted cutting-edge research and built the largest structure in space, the International Space Station.
The final space shuttle mission, STS-135, ended July 21, 2011 when Atlantis rolled to a stop at its home port, NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
