Discovery Flies to Smithsonian
Tuesday, April 17, 2012
By: Matthew Peddie

Space shuttle Discovery flew Tuesday morning from Kennedy Space Center to Washington D.C where it will be displayed at the National Air and Space Museum branch near Dulles International airport.

Discovery's flight is the first of four ferry operations to move the shuttles to new display sites around the country.
 
Preparing Discovery for travel to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum took more than a year.

NASA shuttle program transition manager Kevin Templin says the retirement operation is only half over.
 
“Getting an orbiter to a museum is a big undertaking, a major achievement, but in parallel, there’s a team working to transition all that other property and building and records and things, so that’s ongoing as well," he says.

There’s still plenty of work ahead for the team in charge of retiring the rest of the shuttle fleet.

Enterprise, which never went into space, will be flown from the DC area to New York next week, and in September the Endeavour will fly out to California.
 
Atlantis has the shortest trip of all- from the vehicle assembly building at Kennedy Space Center to the KSC visitors center.