NASA Decides Homes for Retiring Space Shuttles

NASA's space shuttle fleet has only two flights left, and the space agency announced today where the shuttles are going for retirement, reports CollectSpace:

• Atlantis: It stays with NASA and will be parked at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida.
• Discovery: It's going to the Smithsonian's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center near Washington Dulles airport.
• Endeavour: It's going to the California Science Center in Los Angeles.

Twenty-one institutions bid for the shuttles, and the New York Times notes that Museum of Flight in Seattle had already begun construction of a wing to house one of them. Also left out is NASA's Johnson Space Center in Texas. “This oversight smacks of a political gesture in an agency that has always served above politics," says local Rep. Pete Olson. (More Atlantis Space Shuttle stories.)