Retirement Homes

The final resting places of the four remaining space shuttles have been announced by NASA:

"The space shuttle Discovery, NASA’s longest-lived and most-traveled orbiter, will go to the National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center just outside Washington, D.C.

The prototype shuttle Enterprise, which currently lives at the Udvar-Hazy Center, will be moved to the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum in New York. The USS Intrepid is a retired World War II aircraft carrier that recovered the capsules from the Mercury and Gemini space missions after splashdown.

The shuttle Endeavour will go to the California Science Center in Los Angeles after returning from its final flight, which is scheduled to launch April 29.

And the space shuttle Atlantis will retire to the Kennedy Space Center near Orlando, where every shuttle mission originated. Its last flight is scheduled for June 28.

“Take good care of our vehicles,” a choked-up Bolden told the cheering crowd at Kennedy Space Center. “They’ve served the nation well, and we at NASA have a deep and abiding relationship and love affair with them that’s hard to put into words.”"