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Space Shuttle Endeavour over Moffett Federal Airfield. This photograph was taken on Sept. 21, 2012 as the shuttle took its final flight over the San Francisco Bay Area, on its way to the California Space Center in Los Angeles. Photo by Arnold de Leon, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

LA trees, traffic lights yield to Endeavour’s final journey – by road

Tom Hoepf
Tom Hoepf
Space Shuttle Endeavour over Moffett Federal Airfield. This photograph was taken on Sept. 21, 2012 as the shuttle took its final flight over the San Francisco Bay Area, on its way to the California Space Center in Los Angeles. Photo by Arnold de Leon, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.
Space Shuttle Endeavour over Moffett Federal Airfield. This photograph was taken on Sept. 21, 2012 as the shuttle took its final flight over the San Francisco Bay Area, on its way to the California Space Center in Los Angeles. Photo by Arnold de Leon, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

LOS ANGELES (AFP) – The U.S. space shuttle Endeavour began its final journey Friday, at the less-than rocket-propelled speed of 2 mph, in a meticulously planned trip through the streets of Los Angeles.

Some 400 trees have had to be cut down, provoking mild protests from locals. Traffic lights had to be temporarily removed and power lines turned off to make way for the 78-ton vehicle on the two-day, 12-mile journey to California Science Center.

The shuttle, which flew more than 115 million miles in its two-decade career, landed at Los Angeles International Airport three weeks ago piggybacked on a specially fitted 747.

Since then it has been in an airport hangar. But it was rolled out overnight for its final journey, which risked causing traffic chaos before it reaches its destination late Saturday.

The shuttle is mounted on a high-tech flatbed carrier for the trip, which at certain points will involve squeezing round corners within inches of buildings.

“We’re off to a great start,” said Science Center head Jeffrey Rudolph as the shuttle stood for several hours in a parking lot, before starting the journey proper.

“Everything is really going according to plan, exactly as we hoped for.

We’ve still got a long ways to go, but this is an incredibly complex move – lots of people working on it – and we really appreciate it,” he added.

After the space agency NASA brought an end to the 30-year shuttle program last year, major U.S. cities battled for the right to house one of the craft.

Enterprise, the prototype that never flew into space, is now on permanent display on the runway of the Intrepid aircraft carrier in New York.

The Kennedy Space Center will keep Atlantis, and Discovery is on display at a museum outside Washington.

Two other shuttles were destroyed in flight. Challenger disintegrated shortly after liftoff in 1986 and Columbia broke apart on re-entry to Earth in 2003. Both disasters killed everyone on board.

ADDITIONAL IMAGE OF NOTE

Space Shuttle Endeavour over Moffett Federal Airfield. This photograph was taken on Sept. 21, 2012 as the shuttle took its final flight over the San Francisco Bay Area, on its way to the California Space Center in Los Angeles. Photo by Arnold de Leon, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.
Space Shuttle Endeavour over Moffett Federal Airfield. This photograph was taken on Sept. 21, 2012 as the shuttle took its final flight over the San Francisco Bay Area, on its way to the California Space Center in Los Angeles. Photo by Arnold de Leon, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.