From: http://www.space.com/

The space shuttles Endeavour and Discovery cross paths as they roll to new facilities at NASA's Kennedy Space Center on Aug. 11, 2011. CREDIT: NASA KSC View full size image

Two NASA space shuttles, each on the road to retirement, posed nose-to-nose Thursday (Aug. 11) while switching places at the space agency's Florida spaceport.

To stage the maneuver, NASA rolled Discovery out of the giant Vehicle Assembly Building at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida and moved it to a hangar-like building called the Orbiter Processing Facility-1, or OPF-1. Meanwhile, the shuttle Endeavour (which was already inside the hangar) was moved out and over to the massive VAB.

"Endeavour and Discovery switched locations — a shuttle shuffle," Kennedy Space Center spokesman Allard Beutel told SPACE.com. "It's just a storage thing, is what it comes down to — we have three shuttles and two locations." [Images: Two Shuttles Meet Nose to Nose]

When the two spacecraft passed one another on the same road, space shuttle shutterbugs went wild. The result: Never-before-seen photos of two-thirds of NASA's shuttle fleet in the same place at the same time.

"We've never had two shuttles pass each other to go to two separate locations," Beutel said. "This was the first time we've ever done this."

The two space shuttles, along with their sibling Atlantis, are being readied for retired life at museums now that NASA has finished flying the orbiters.

At NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, space shuttles Discovery and Endeavour part company outside Orbiter Processing Facility-3 (OPF-3) where they paused for a unique "nose-to-nose" photo opportunity.
CREDIT: NASA/Frankie Martin

View full size image

Thursday's double-shuttle move will allow technicians to work on Discovery inside the OPF-1 in preparation for shipping it to the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum's Udvar-Hazy Center outside Washington, D.C., around April 2012.

Work is also ongoing inside the nearby Orbiter Processing Facility-2, where Atlantis is being prepped for its retirement home at the Kennedy Space Center Visitors Center, down the road.

Atlantis was the last shuttle to fly; it landed July 21, finishing the 135th and final mission of the 30-year space shuttle program. Atlantis is due to travel almost seven miles to the Visitors Center in early 2013.

For the time being, Endeavour will rest dormant inside the VAB, which was where NASA stacked orbiters with their external tanks and solid rocket boosters in preparation for launch. Sometime next summer Endeavour will travel across the country atop a special Boeing 747 jet to the California Science Center in Los Angeles, where it will live out its days.

NASA named the three recipients of the flown shuttles earlier this year, crushing the hopes of about 20 other museums that had lobbied to host an orbiter. New York's Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum will also get a shuttle, the test vehicle Enterprise (currently housed at the Smithsonian), which never made it to space.

Before Discovery, Endeavour and Atlantis can be put on display, they must be processed to remove all hazardous parts and materials, especially any residual rocket fuel lingering in the Forward Reaction Control System and the Orbital Maneuvering Systems Engines.

Those systems have been removed and sent to the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico for intensive cleaning. Once they are safe, they'll be shipped back and reinstalled on the orbiters before they are sent to museums.

"The entire system is completely cleaned out so there's not even a modicum of toxic chemicals left, so 20 years from now, someone standing under a shuttle doesn't get dripped on," Beutel said.

pace Shuttle and Space Station Photographed Together: APOD June 8th 2011

from: http://apod.nasa.gov/

Astronomy Picture of the Day

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

2011 June 8
Space Shuttle and Space Station Photographed Together
Credit: NASA  Explanation: How was this picture taken? Usually, pictures of the shuttle, taken from space, are snapped from the space station. Commonly, pictures of the space station are snapped from the shuttle. How, then, can there be a picture of both the shuttle and the station together, taken from space? The answer is that during the Space Shuttle Endeavour's last trip to the International Space Station two weeks ago, a supply ship departed the station with astronauts that captured a series of rare views. The supply ship was the Russian Soyuz TMA-20 which landed in Kazakhstan later that day. The above spectacular image well captures the relative sizes of the station and docked shuttle. Far below, clouds of Earth are seen above a blue sea. The next and last launch of a US space shuttle is scheduled for early July.

William Shatner Helps Us Say Goodbye to the Space Shuttle

From: http://furiousfanboys.com/

There are only two Space Shuttle missions left. Endeavor goes up later this month, and Atlantis launches her final mission (and the final Space Shuttle launch ever) on June 28th. As space buffs, it’s pretty sad to be saying goodbye to the shuttle program. But who better to help us say goodbye than Captain Kirk himself? NASA has released a fourteen-minute video narrated by William Shatner that gives a brief history of the shuttle program, and showing what goes into a shuttle launch and it’s described as only Shatner can. Check it out.

Counting down to who will land a retired shuttle

photo credit: http://www.wallpaperbase.com/wallpapers/space/spaceshuttle/space_shuttle_13.jpg

20 agencies show interest, but NASA says it’s in ‘a holding pattern’

By ERIC BERGER
HOUSTON CHRONICLE

With space shuttles still launching and landing, NASA isn't keen to talk about what will happen to the iconic vehicles after they're retired.

But the competition among institutions to land a space shuttle for public display is heating up.

Last December, NASA issued a “request for information” to educational institutions, science museums and other organizations about their interest in acquiring a space shuttle. The space agency estimated it would cost about $42 million to prepare the vehicle and deliver it via a modified 747 Boeing aircraft carrier.

About 20 institutions — including a group of bidders led by Space Center Houston — responded. Since then, however, the space agency has been mum.

“We're still in a holding pattern,” said Robert Pearlman, editor of collectSPACE.com, a Web site for space history enthusiasts. “I don't think anyone in the program really wants to talk about retiring the orbiters while they're still flying them.”

With the recent safe return of space shuttle Atlantis to Kennedy Space Center, NASA now has five shuttle missions scheduled during the next year before it retires the vehicles.

The retirement date could be extended by President Barack Obama, who is expected to decide on the future of NASA's human spaceflight program during the next few months, but the shuttle's end is coming.

As part of NASA's conditions on receiving a shuttle, institutions must promise to display the vehicle indoors and commit to ongoing costs for its upkeep and care.

It will take time to raise funds to acquire the shuttle and prepare a facility in which to house it, but so far NASA headquarters in Washington has not indicated when it will make a decision.

“NASA's primary focus is to ensure that the space shuttle safely and successfully completes its mission — finishing the assembly of the International Space Station by the end 2010,” said NASA spokesman John Yembrick. “It is premature to speculate on when a final decision will be made.”

The Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum is guaranteed one of the vehicles. The institution already has space shuttle Enterprise — which was used as a test vehicle in atmospheric flights but never flew in space — on display at its Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Va.

Discovery is Smithsonian's

NASA has confirmed that it will give the Smithsonian space shuttle Discovery, which the institution prizes for its role as the return-to-flight orbiter after both the Challenger and Columbia tragedies as well as its role in launching the Hubble Space Telescope.

That leaves Atlantis and Endeavour as the two remaining orbiters that have flown in space. And once it receives Discovery, Pearlman said the Smithsonian is likely to loan out Enterprise to another institution.

Pearlman said Kennedy Space Center — where the shuttles are launched from and serviced — seems a highly likely choice given that transporting the vehicle there would be no problem.

And he believes Houston has a very good chance as well, given its role as the space shuttle program's headquarters, home of mission control and the place where most astronauts live.

“I actually think that as long as we can raise the money to assure there will be a facility and support it, I think Johnson has a terrific chance of getting it,” Pearlman said.

Photo Credit: https://www.magellanmodels.com/repository/product/KYNASAOCR_2.jpg

The 20 bids came from a varied group of institutions around the country, from Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum in Oregon to the Tulsa Air and Space Museum in Oklahoma.

The 20 bids came from a varied group of institutions around the country, from Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum in Oregon to the Tulsa Air and Space Museum in Oklahoma.

Houston's bid is led by Space Center Houston, which wants to house the vehicle on its property adjacent to Johnson Space Center, said the center's chief executive officer, Richard E. Allen Jr.

“Space Center Houston is working along with Bay Area Houston Economic Partnership and other partners in Houston and the state because we think it's going to take a broad-reaching effort to make it happen,” he said.

“You have to raise all the money to prepare a shuttle, and you also have to raise the cost for a building. Any time you're trying to raise money in those amounts, it's a big undertaking.”

eric.berger@chron.com

Shuttle Endeavour: Incredible View