Endeavour flight delayed, but arrival in L.A. remains on schedule
One leg of the space shuttle Endeavour’s final journey has been delayed because of bad weather, but the craft will still arrive in Los Angeles on schedule Thursday, NASA announced Sunday.
Endeavour was to travel from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., to Houston on Monday but the flight was pushed back one day because of stormy conditions. Despite the delay, the shuttle — mounted on a Boeing 747 aircraft — will still do low-level flyovers in Florida, Texas, New Mexico and Northern and Southern California before touching down in Los Angeles.
After arriving, Endeavour will spend several weeks in the United Airlines hangar at Los Angeles International Airport undergoing preparations for a two-day, 12-mile journey on Oct. 12 and 13 via surface streets to the California Science Center in Exposition Park.
Celebrations are planned along the route and the public can view the $2-billion shuttle, which made 25 missions and traveled 122,883,151 miles, as it snakes its way along La Tijera, Manchester, Crenshaw and Martin Luther King Jr. boulevards.
Endeavour is so large that crews have had to remove about 400 trees from the planned route. Every tree removed will be replaced by two trees. Workers also will take down many overhead utility poles and signs to make way for the spacecraft, and will reassemble them after it passes.
The shuttle will be on display at the science center starting Oct. 30.
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