Yesterday, the Space Shuttle Orbiter Endeavour arrived in Los Angeles after a long journey atop the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft (SCA), the 747 specially modified to carry the Space Shuttles, which can’t fly on their own as a airplane. A small ceremony was held to welcome it.

After a series of operations that last month led to a kind of face-to-face with the Space Shuttle Atlantis, last Tuesday the Space Shuttle Endeavour left from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida for what is supposed to be its last journey. On October 12, they’ll start the complex operations to trasnport it to the California Science Center, where it will be exposed in the Samuel Oschin Space Shuttle Endeavour Display Pavilion from the end of October. It will be a short yet complex journey because the Endeavour will be transported on the roads of the area.

The flight of the Space Shuttle Endeavour was long not only because the SCA crossed the U.S.A. thus making some stops for refueling but also because it made some flyovers some cities. To show the Endeavour in the best way, the SCA carried it around the skies of the lucky cities that have been chosen for this unique show.

It was also the last show of this kind because the Space Shuttle Atlantis, the last Space Shuttle yet to be put on display, will go to the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex, which is so close to the hangar where it’s currently closed that it won’t require to fly there.

The two SCAs will be reused for the project SOFIA (Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy), which in very simple terms is a flying astronomical observatory.

From Houston, where it passed Thursday, to Sacramento and San Francisco, many people have admired the passage of the Space Shuttle Endeavour taking pictures to put online. It’s yet another demonstration of the importance that the Space Shuttles had for the people and that after all there’s still interest in space missions.