Ferry Flights
Ferry flights generally originated at Edwards Air Force Base in California or on rare occasions White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico following missions which landed there, especially in the early days of the Space Shuttle program or when weather at the Shuttle Landing Facility (SLF) at the Kennedy Space Center prevented ending missions there. Flights generally ended at the SLF. A number of flights began at the Dryden Flight Research Center following delivery of the orbiter from Rockwell International to NASA from the nearby facilities in Palmdale, California.
The last ferry flight with Endeavour started on September 19, 2012 with flight from Kennedy Space Center to Ellington Field. The second leg on September 20, 2012 Ellington Field to Edwards Air Force Base. The third and final leg was flown on September 21, 2012 when it departed Edwards Air Force Base and headed north along the California central valley, conducted a circuit over Sacramento, and then proceeded to the San Francisco Bay Area. In the Bay Area, the flight proceeded along the east side of the bay, passing over Oakland, Berkeley, El Cerrito, and Richmond before crossing the bay and conducting two loops over San Francisco, passing over the Golden Gate Bridge each time. The flight then proceeded south along the west side of the bay, conducting a low fly-over at NASA Ames Research Center/Moffett Air Field before turning south, along the way making a pass over Vandenberg Air Force Base, which was once slated to be a launch site for the Space Shuttle program. As it approached the Los Angeles area, the SCA/Endeavour conducted flyovers of various landmarks in the greater LA region, including the Hollywood Sign and the Griffith Observatory. As it approached from the south along the Pacific coast, it also passed over several communities, provided sighting opportunities for thousands of spectators.
Read more about this topic: Shuttle Carrier Aircraft
Famous quotes containing the words ferry and/or flights:
“This ferry was as busy as a beaver dam, and all the world seemed anxious to get across the Merrimack River at this particular point, waiting to get set over,—children with their two cents done up in paper, jail-birds broke lose and constable with warrant, travelers from distant lands to distant lands, men and women to whom the Merrimack River was a bar.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Franklin said once in one of his inspired flights of malignity—
Early to bed and early to rise
Make a man healthy and wealth and wise.
As if it were any object to a boy to be healthy and wealthy and wise on such terms.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)