Space shuttles to show at museums

THIRTY years after the first space flight of the US shuttle program, NASA has announced the three retiring orbiters will take up residence as museum pieces in Florida, Virginia and California.

NASA’s declaration on Tuesday sparked anger in Texas, the home of mission control in Houston, and one senator from the state of Ohio, the birthplace of American aeroplane flight, demanded a federal probe into the selection process.

Discovery, the oldest space shuttle of the fleet, will land at the Steven F Udvar Hazy Centre, a branch of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space museum in Virginia, NASA administrator Charles Bolden said.

Atlantis, set to be the final shuttle to fly in June before the US space shuttle program closes, will make its permanent home at Florida’s Kennedy Space Centre, host of repeated shuttle launches in the past three decades.

Endeavour will roost at the California Science Centre in Los Angeles, NASA said at a ceremony to honour the first shuttle flight by Columbia in 1981, which also coincided with the 50th anniversary of human spaceflight first achieved by Russia’s Yuri Gagarin.

And the prototype Enterprise, which never actually flew in space, will be sent to New York for display on a US aircraft carrier docked off Manhattan, the USS Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum.

The US shuttle program is set to close for good after the final missions by Endeavour in April and Atlantis in June.

Discovery ended its last journey to the International Space Station in March.

After that, astronauts will rely on Russia’s space capsules for transit to the International Space Station.

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