Space shuttle Endeavour touches down (+video)

The space shuttle Endeavour landed in California on its way to its final resting place. On the way, it made a flyover in Tucson, Arizona where former Congresswoman?Gabrielle Giffords?and her husband Mark Kelly, Endeavour's retired commander, were watching.?

By Gene Blevins,?Reuters / September 20, 2012

The Space Shuttle Endeavour sits atop NASA's Shuttle Carrier Aircraft (SCA) at the NASA Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif.

AP Photo/Jae C. Hong

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EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif.

The space shuttle Endeavour, carried piggyback atop a jumbo jet, landed at?Edwards Air Force Base?in?California?on Thursday at the tail end of a cross-country trip to Los Angeles to begin its final mission as a museum exhibit.

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The space shuttle Endeavour is nearing the end of its final mission. It landed at Edwards Air Force Base in California and will soon retire at a museum in Los Angeles.

The specially modified?Boeing 747?with the newly retired spaceship perched on its back touched down safely at 12:50 p.m. local time (3:50 p.m. EDT) at Edwards, about 100 miles (160 km) north of Los Angeles in the Mojave Desert.

NASA retired its shuttle fleet last year after completing the U.S. portion of the $100 billion International Space Station, a permanently staffed research complex that is owned by 15 nations and orbits about 250 miles (400 km) above Earth.

Endeavour embarked on its last cross-county "ferry" journey on Wednesday from?Cape Canaveral,?Florida, and made several low-altitude passes over NASA centers in?Mississippi,?Louisiana?and?Texas?before stopping for the night at Ellington Field near the?Johnson Space Center in Houston.

The trip resumed early on Thursday, with Endeavour?and its carrier jet making additional flyovers - one over?Tucson,?Arizona, in a salute to former Congresswoman?Gabrielle Giffords?and her husband,?Mark Kelly, the retired astronaut who commanded Endeavour's final flight on his last mission in late May 2011.

Giffords, still recuperating from a gunshot wound to the head suffered in an attempt on her life last year, watched the flyover from the roof of a?Tucson?parking garage with her husband and mother, according to former aide?C.J. Karamargin, who joined them.

"When it came into view, Mark said, 'There's my plane!'" Karamargin recounted. "Gabby was just elated, hooting and hollering like the rest of us were."

From?Arizona,?Endeavour and its carrier jet flew on to?California, where the spacecraft was built two decades ago, for the landing at?Edwards Air Force Base.

The sprawling installation used to serve as the primary landing site for NASA's shuttle program before the space agency built a landing facility for the orbiters at the Kennedy Space Center in?Florida. Edwards then became the principal backup landing spot for shuttles in case of bad weather at Cape Canaveral.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/science/~3/3oG4YWAwMEQ/Space-shuttle-Endeavour-touches-down-video

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