[Maggots & Mayhem]

Photos I took on Sept. 21, 2012 from Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay, recording the shuttle Endeavour's final flight. The last 7 images are not mine, and the last 3 of those are at it's final stop in LA
The space shuttle Endeavour, historic veteran of 122 million miles in orbital flight,
will fly low through Bay Area skies Friday morning on its way to retirement in a Los Angeles museum.

Endeavour's astronauts flew the spacecraft on 25 eventful missions in space as high as 330 miles above Earth during its 10-year active life, but its flight over Northern California will be more humble.

The huge spacecraft, tall as a five-story building, will be a mere passenger this time, hitched atop a modified Boeing 747 cargo aircraft and passing only 1,500 feet overhead on the final leg of its flight from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where it was first launched a dozen years ago.

In a trip characterized by NASA as a farewell tour, Endeavour will fly piggyback Friday from the space agency's Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base in the Mojave Desert, 70 miles northeast of downtown Los Angeles. Its flight path will carry it into Northern California airspace over Sacramento, Oakland, San Francisco and NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View before heading south to Los Angeles International Airport.

The entire flight over the Bay Area is scheduled to occur roughly between 9 and 10 a.m. Friday.

Delays could occur if weather along the California coast changes, NASA officials say. But the forecast calls for only patchy coastal fog Friday morning, so the shuttle's passage should be clearly visible in most places.

By comparison, commercial aircraft typically fly over the outer Bay Area at 15,000 feet or more, so at 1,500 feet, Endeavour's details should be easy to see.

Skirting the city
But the shuttle won't fly directly above San Francisco. The city's buildings are tall and Sutro Tower's combined height and elevation atop Mount Sutro (1,811 feet) put it higher than Endeavour's planned flyover.

Unless weather forces an alternate route, Endeavour's course will carry it directly over the Golden Gate and Bay bridges, and on toward Moffett Field and the NASA Ames Research Center for a pass over. The flyover at the research center will be a salute to the place where scientists and engineers played a major role in preparing all the space shuttles for orbital flight, NASA officials said.

Police expect the flyover to slow traffic to a crawl on the bridges and highways, and caution drivers from looking upward to view the shuttle as it flies overhead.

As a workhorse in the shuttle fleet, Endeavour spent more than 296 days in space orbit, carried a total 148 astronauts, and performed a variety of science and engineering missions.

Its crews repaired the vitally important Hubble Space Telescope in 1993, had a rendezvous with Russia's short-lived MIR space station in 1998, and flew a dozen missions helping to assemble the International Space Station in what are known as EVAs - extra vehicular activities.

Final shuttle homes
Once in Los Angeles, the shuttle will be towed by truck along a 12-mile parade route to its permanent home at the California Science Center in the city's Exposition Park.

The two remaining space shuttles in NASA's fleet are Discovery, which is on permanent view at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum's aircraft center near Dulles International Airport in Washington, and Atlantis, which will remain at the Kennedy Space Center, where a permanent museum is under construction.

The shuttle Enterprise, which was used for test flights before the others flew, is now on exhibit at the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum in New York City.

Two shuttles, Challenger and Columbia, along with their crews, were lost in flight.

Final flight
After 25 missions in space, the space shuttle Endeavour will make a farewell flyover above the Bay Area on Friday morning, piggybacking on a Boeing 747.

[kellyhound]

grreat pics

[Faline]

[Sharon]

Brilliant set