Thirty years after the first space flight of the iconic US shuttle program, NASA announced on Tuesday where the retiring orbiters would take their final resting places as museum pieces. 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 program closes this chapter, will make its permanent home at the Kennedy Space Centre, host of repeated shuttle launches in the past three decades. Endeavour will come home to roost at the California Science Center in Los Angeles. The prototype Enterprise which never flew in space will be sent to New York where it will go on display at a US aircraft carrier docked off Manhattan, the USS Intrepid Air and Space Museum.