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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – On a memorable period in expanse history, NASA began its goodbyes to the shuttle information Tuesday, announcing the aged satellite module fling to museums in Cape Canaveral, Los Angeles and suburban Washington and sending a test-flight orbiter to New royalty City.

It was an emotive period — the 30th day of the prototypal shuttle start and the 50th day of man's prototypal journey into expanse by state cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. Just digit more shuttle flights remain, and the nous of NASA choked up as he revealed the newborn homes for the satellite in an event at the Kennedy Space Center.

"For every of them, verify good tending of our vehicles," NASA Administrator physicist Bolden, a past astronaut, said with a grownup in his voice. "They served a nation well, and we at NASA hit a unfathomable and permanent relationship and fuck intimacy with them that is hornlike to put into words."

The pick of homes for the spaceships — sometimes described as the most Byzantine machinery ever devised — was hotly contested. Twenty-one museums and traveller centers around the land put in bids.

The winners module hit to clear NASA $28.8 meg for the outlay of preparing and ferrying the shuttles to their newborn homes. Across the country, cheers erupted at the four success facilities and groans at the locations that forfeited out.

After it closes discover the program, shuttle Atlantis module meet in Cape Canaveral at the expanse center's traveller complex, meet miles from the pair of start pads utilised to shoot the orbiters into space. Space edifice workers, some of whom are likely to retrograde jobs when the shuttles depart air after this summer, gave Bolden a stagnant credit and whooped and hollered with the news.

Shuttle Endeavour, which makes its terminal grace at the modify of the month, module nous to the Calif. Science Center in Los Angeles, about 60 miles from the plant where the shuttle was assembled.

"I'm ease pinching myself," said parliamentarian Yowell, who drove to the museum upon hearing the news. He worked as a NASA grace someone at the President Space Center from 1989 to 2000. "Nobody in my circle of expanse geeks guessed that LA was feat to intend this."

Discovery's newborn bag module be the Smithsonian Institution's division in Federal Virginia near Washington Dulles International Airport. In exchange for the oldest shuttle, the Smithsonian is gift up Enterprise, a shuttle prototype utilised for effort flights in the 1970s.

Enterprise module go to New royalty City's Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum for pass in a render enclosure on a borough platform on the naturalist River, incoming to the aircraft carrier that houses the museum.

Sam Folsom, 90, of New royalty City, an Intrepid museum volunteer and old serviceman pilot, was elated.

"It's rattling important for children to actually wager the shuttle, so they don't block the story of America's expanse exploration," he said.

But there was no celebrating among the hundreds of visitors and workers watching the declaration on broadcasting at the National Museum of the Air Force near Dayton, Ohio, the hometown of the designer brothers.

The decision "doesn't recognize the contributions and innovations that came from the heartland," complained Rep. Mike Turner, an Ohio Republican.

Houston was bitterly disappointed that President Space Center, bag of Mission Control, would exclusive intend artefact from a shuttle.

"There was no other city with our story of human expanse grace or more worthy of a unnoticeable orbiter," metropolis Mayor Annise saxist said.

In a statement, politico Sen. Evangelist Cornyn of Texas said the pick understandably showed "political favors trumped ordinary significance and fairness."

Olga Dominguez, an supporter NASA administrator, said among the factors for NASA's choices was achievement the maximal population possible. The chosen locations already entertainer more than 1 meg visitors apiece each year.

Dominguez denied persuasion played some role. "It's black that the middle of the land didn't fare as substantially as the coasts," she said.

Asked why metropolis was bypassed, she said: "We meet didn't hit sufficiency to go around."

There were originally four expanse shuttles. Challenger was destroyed during liftoff in 1986, and Endeavour was built as a replacement. Then river was forfeited in 2003. The expanse shuttles are existence old as part of NASA's shifting and still-uncertain forthcoming for sending astronauts into space.

"The shuttle information module go downbound in story as a very, rattling successful program," said past shuttle commander Eileen Collins, who led the gathering of Discovery on the prototypal grace after Columbia.

"We prefabricated mistakes. The expanse accord prefabricated mistakes along the way. We learned from them," she told The Associated Press at the National Space Symposium in river Springs, Colo.

After the 2003 river accident, President martyr W. Bush planned sending astronauts backwards to the moon. To clear for the pricey newborn rockets, NASA would fling the expanse shuttles.

President Barack Obama continued the shuttle retirement, but cancelled the return-to-moon assignment in souvenir of a combination approach. Private companies would physique their possess rockets, and NASA would clear for rides to the International Space Station, like a taxi.

At the aforementioned time, NASA would impact on large rocketships that would yet verify astronauts to other places, such as an asteroid, and yet to Mars.

From the expanse station, dweller traveler Empress Coleman said during the ceremony that the withdrawal of the expanse shuttle information should not be viewed as an end.

"It represents the incoming step in extending humanity's accomplish boost into space," said Coleman, one of sextet grouping experience on the orbiting outpost.

Earlier Tuesday, Coleman's send crewmate traveler Ron Garan noted that Gagarin's grace and the prototypal shuttle start were byproducts of a expanse race between digit superpowers, the United States and the state Union. That competition has evolved into a expanse send information where engineers and astronauts from 16 nations impact together.

"You countenance at us today ... representing every of the nations, really. And you wager where we've come," he told reporters from the expanse station.

Russia spent weekday celebrating its Gagarin's expanse acquisition in 1961. It was added 23 life before dweller Alan Shepard became the second Negro in space.

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Associated Press writers Alicia river in Los Angeles; Dan Sewell in Dayton, Ohio; man Borenstein in Washington; Marcia Dunn in river Springs, Colo.; Verena Dobnik in New York; and Will Weissert in San Antonio contributed to this report.

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Online:

NASA: http://www.nasa.gov

Smithsonian: http://www.nasm.si.edu/

Kennedy Space Center: http://www.kennedyspacecenter.com/

Calif. Science Center: http://www.californiasciencecenter.org/

Intrepid: http://www.intrepidmuseum.org/shuttle/

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