Endeavour was the most popular entry, accounting for almost one-third of the state-level winnersįor example, Utah's state level winner, Nolan Butcher, a sixth grade student from Nibley Park Elementary school located in Salt Lake City Utah, selected Endeavour because some definitions of the word mean to be bold and put forth great effort. Entries included an essay about the name, the story behind it and why it was appropriate for a NASA shuttle, and the project that supported the name. The decision to build Endeavour was favored over refitting Space Shuttle Enterprise on cost grounds.Įndeavour was named through a national competition involving students in elementary and secondary schools. Structural spares from the construction of Space Shuttle Discovery and Space Shuttle Atlantis, two of the three remaining operating shuttles at the time, were used in its assembly. The United States Congress authorized the construction of Endeavour in 1987 to replace Space Shuttle Challenger, which was lost in an accident in 1986. (The other two are Space Shuttle Discovery and Space Shuttle Atlantis.) Endeavour was the fifth and final NASA space shuttle to be built.Įndeavour is currently in the Orbiter Processing Facility being prepared for its next space shuttle mission, STS-127, currently slated to launch as early as from Launch Pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center. It's staying in Florida, at the visitor center right next door to the Kennedy Space Center.Space Shuttle Endeavour is one of the three currently operational Space Shuttle orbiters in the Space Shuttle fleet of NASA, the space agency of the United States. The last shuttle left will be Atlantis, and it will make the shortest trip of all. The others went to museums in New York and outside Washington, D.C. "You could take your thumb, for example, and just punch it right through one of the tiles."Īfter Endeavour is safely at its final resting place, NASA will have delivered three of its four shuttles. "And as a curator, to be perfectly candid, that makes me a little nervous," Phillips says, noting that although the shuttle's tiles were designed to withstand the extreme heat of re-entering Earth's atmosphere, they're actually very fragile. At some spots, there are clearances of just 6 inches or so, says Phillips. And in municipal government, it's rare that you get an opportunity to participate in such a nationally significant event."Įven with obstructions gone, the route will sometimes be a tight squeeze. Mawusi Watson, chief of staff to the city administrator for Inglewood, says, "This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. It's promised to not just replace them but plant even more in a 2-for-1 deal. The science center says the vast majority are small trees. Workers remove a tree from a median in the middle of Manchester Boulevard in Inglewood, Calif., on Sept. "There are McDonald's along the way, absolutely, there are McDonald's everyplace in L.A.," says a laughing Phillips, who knows the route well. So the iconic shuttle will be a surreal sight, moving slowly down wide commercial boulevards and passing places like Starbucks coffee shops and fast-food joints. "You can't pull the wings off and do things like we could with other aircraft." "You couldn't take the tail off it," Phillips says. Taking the space shuttle apart and transporting it in pieces just wasn't possible because of the way it's covered in heat shield tiles, explains Ken Phillips, curator for aerospace science at the California Science Center, which won a fierce competition last year to get one of NASA's retired shuttles. Getting it through the city streets in one piece is no easy feat. That's because Endeavour is simply huge: Its wingspan is 78 feet and the tip of its tail is five stories off the ground. That two-day, 1-mile-per-hour trip is scheduled for mid-October, and the planning for it has rivaled the amount of preparation it used to take to launch Endeavour into space. The giant spaceship will ride on top of a special transporter for about 12 miles. Then, after processing at the airport, the shuttle will have to make a long, unprecedented trip through city streets.
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