Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Music
NARRATOR: Space shuttle Endeavour lifted off into the Florida skies
on the power of a modified 747 to begin a new mission of inspiration.
The Shuttle Carrier Aircraft, or SCA, will carry Endeavour across the southern
United States over two days to Los Angeles.
Endeavour will go on display at the California Science Center in late October.
The pair will make a flyover of NASA's Stennis Space Center in Mississippi,
and the Michoud Assembly Facility near New Orleans,
before stopping at Johnson Space Center, home of NASA's Mission Control.
The SCA is the same converted airliner that launched Enterprise on a series of gliding
tests in 1977.
Since then, the SCA has been used to carry shuttles back to Florida after a landing at
California's Edwards Air Force Base.
That heritage will not go unnoticed as the SCA and Endeavour will make an overnight
stop at Edwards before they go to Los Angeles International Airport.
The ferry flight will be the last of the shuttle era. Shuttle Discovery is already on display
at Washington, D.C.'s National Air and Space Museum
and shuttle Atlantis will be shown at NASA's Kennedy Space Center.
Discovery's flight to Washington garnered great public attention as people who had not
seen a space shuttle in the sky stopped traffic to wave and photograph the spacecraft.
The same kind of attention is expected for Endeavour as it makes its cross-country
journey to its new home.