NASA opened the competition with the provision the proposals were drawn from nautical tradition. "There was a little contest that decided how we're going to name it," recalled Kelly.Įndeavour was christened through a contest initiated by Congress in response to the concern by students over the loss of Challenger. NASA's tribute art for space shuttle Endeavour depicting OV-105 and its 25 mission patches. Largely assembled from spare parts pre-fabricated during the development of Discovery and Atlantis, NASA's fifth orbiter, or OV-105, was completed in 1991. "It was decided that to build a new one would actually be more cost-effective to do, build a brand new orbiter, and that became Endeavour." "At the time the thought was, well, maybe we could modify Enterprise, which was the approach and landing test orbiter," said Kelly. Initially NASA considered retrofitting its prototype orbiter to take Challenger's place. "After the Challenger accident, Congress appropriated money to build. "Endeavour was the replacement for Challenger," Kelly recounted. "It hasn't been around as long as Discovery and Atlantis, but it has done some pretty major things," Kelly said about Endeavour during an earlier NASA interview.Įndeavour inherited its legacy from NASA's second-to-fly orbiter, which tragically was lost 73 seconds into its 10th launch in January 1986. EDT (1947 GMT) on Friday, April 29 for a two-week mission. Kelly and his five STS-134 crew members are scheduled to launch onboard Endeavour at 3:47 p.m. After 25 flights, we will hopefully land here and then Endeavour is done with its service to the country," added Kelly. All rights reserved."We are going to take Endeavour out for a couple more, probably about five or six million more miles. 30.įollow collectSPACE on Facebook and Twitter collectSPACE and editor Robert Pearlman robertpearlman. The California Science Center will open the new Samuel Oschin Space Shuttle Endeavour Display Pavilion on Oct. on a 12-mile (19-kilometer) journey to its new home. 12, the shuttle will begin a two day road trip to the California Science Center, moving through the streets of Inglewood and L.A. Once on the ground in Los Angeles and without a corresponding Mate-Demate Device at LAX, Endeavour will be hoisted off the SCA using two large cranes and positioned onto a modified NASA overland transporter. The journey, and its pre-departure preparations, are subject to both weather and operational constraints and could be delayed or changed, NASA officials advised. In addition to performing low passes while flying over several NASA facilities, the carrier aircraft and its orbiter passenger will make planned stops in Houston and El Paso in Texas, and at Edwards Air Force Base in southern California before finally landing at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) on Sept. The space shuttle era's final ferry flight will take Endeavour on a cross-country tour. The air- and space-craft combo will exit the MDD on Sunday morning in preparation for their final departure on Monday. On Saturday, technicians will work to "hard mate" the connection, securing bolts that will hold the two vehicles together in flight. The two craft were "soft-mated" by mid-afternoon. Endeavour was then lowered onto the back of the jetliner, such that three ports on its underbelly aligned with the attachment points protruding from the 747's upper fuselage. Over the course of several hours, the 155,000-pound (70,000-kilogram) shuttle was attached to a metal sling and hoisted 90 feet into the air so that the carrier aircraft, known by its tail number as NASA 905, could be towed in underneath it. "There were definitely some tears this morning during the rollover from the Vehicle Assembly Building to the Mate-Demate Device, especially from those who have worked on Endeavour for a long period of time." "We are a little bit sad that this will be the last time that we're doing this," Stilson told reporters covering the mating operations. Arriving at Kennedy's Shuttle Landing Facility in the pre-dawn hours, Endeavour was moved into a gantry-like steel structure known as the Mate-Demate Device (MDD) to be paired with the 747 SCA. 14) towed the shuttle from where it was temporarily parked inside its former launch assembly building to the runway where it last returned from space. To prepare Endeavour for its ferry flight to the West Coast, NASA technicians on Friday (Sept.
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