US space agency NASA announced the final homes of the three remaining space shuttles Tuesday as it prepares to retire the ageing fleet, dpa reported.
The shuttle Atlantis will remain at Florida's Kennedy Space Centre, going on display in its visitors centre, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden told a cheering crowd gathered to mark the 30th anniversary of the first shuttle flight.
Endeavour will land at the California Science Centre, not far from where the shuttle was developed and constructed. Discovery, which has made the most flights of any of the remaining shuttles, will be displayed at the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum outside Washington.
Another shuttle, Enterprise, which was utilized for tests but never flew in space, is already on display at a branch of the Smithsonian outside Washington, but will be moved to make way for Discovery. The Enterprise will then be shifted to the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum in New York.
Discovery is the first shuttle to be retired after completing a mission last month. Endeavour is scheduled to take-off later this month, and Atlantis at the end of June, marking the last flight of the celebrated space shuttle programme.
NASA plans to shift routine ferrying of astronauts aloft to commercial spaceflight providers and focus its attention on building long-range craft to eventually take people to Mars. In the short term, the agency must rely on Russian Soyuz vehicles to carry astronauts aloft.
Two shuttles - Columbia, the first in space, and Challenger - were destroyed in accidents in 2003 and 1986. Fourteen astronauts died in those two disasters.
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