Saying Good-bye to Endeavour

On my week-long speaking tour at Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex, I drove out with communicators Nick Thomas and Mark Smith to visit my first shuttle, orbiter OV-105, Endeavour. Today she was being readied for her final voyage to the West Coast and future home at the California Science Center. Hoisted atop the NASA 747 carrier aircraft, Endeavour was the center of attention as the skilled shuttle techs fastened the orbiter to her three attach points on the shuttle carrier. On Monday she’ll take flight enroute to Houston, El Paso, Edwards Air Force Base/Dryden Flight Research Facility, and finally, LAX.

Endeavour was a superb ship to live and work aboard. Our two Space Radar Lab missions, in 1994, aboard OV-105 were tremendously successful Missions to Planet Earth. (More on those research flights in the coming week as we approach the 18^th anniversary of the liftoff of STS-68, SRL-2.) Read about my adventures on Endeavour in “Sky Walking: An Astronaut’s Memoir.”

Astronaut Tom Jones with OV-105 Endeavour, 14 Sep 12.

I will miss Endeavour’s regular presence in space. May we Americans soon send her successors into space to fulfill her legacy.

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