NASA announces shuttle retirement homes

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden on Tuesday announced the facilities where four shuttle orbiters will be displayed permanently at the conclusion of the Space Shuttle Program.

Shuttle Enterprise, the first orbiter built, will move from the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Virginia to the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum in New York.

The Udvar-Hazy Center will become the new home for shuttle Discovery, which retired after completing its 39th mission in March.

Shuttle Endeavour, which is preparing for its final flight at the end of the month will go to the California Science Center in Los Angeles.

Shuttle Atlantis, which will fly the last planned shuttle mission in June, will be displayed at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor’s Complex in Florida.


NASA also announced that hundreds of shuttle artifacts have been allocated to museums and education institutions.

Various shuttle simulators for the Adler Planetarium in Chicago, the Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum of McMinnville, Ore., and Texas A&M's Aerospace Engineering Department

Full fuselage trainer for the Museum of Flight in Seattle

Nose cap assembly and crew compartment trainer for the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio

Flight deck pilot and commander seats for NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston

Orbital maneuvering system engines for the U.S. Space and Rocket Center of Huntsville, Ala., National Air and Space Museum in Washington, and Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum

Norad Flight Exercise Planned For National Capital Region

North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and its geographical
component, the Continental United States NORAD Region (CONR), will
conduct an exercise, Falcon Virgo 11-07, beginning midnight Tuesday into
early Wednesday morning in the National Capital Region, Washington, D.C.
and Frederick County, Md.

Flights in the National Capital Region are scheduled to take place
between midnight Tuesday and 2 a.m. Wednesday morning. Flights in the
Frederick County, Md., area are scheduled to take place between 4:10
a.m.and 5 a.m. Wednesday morning.

In the event of inclement weather, the exercise will take place the next
day until all training requirements are met.

For more information on Falcon Virgo exercises, please contact CONR
Public Affairs at 850-283-8080, or the NORAD Public Affairs Office at
719-554-6889.

U.S. Department of Defense
Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (Public Affairs)

Air France AB380 clips tail of Delta commuter plane

An Air France jumbo jet bound for Paris clipped the tail of a Delta Comair commuter plane while taxiing last night at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport.

There were no injuries, though passengers were startled, and the planes appeared to be damaged.

"It was pretty damned scary," Poppy Lawton, 29, of London, who was aboard the Delta flight, tells the New York Daily News. "You could hear things breaking, almost like glass breaking."

An Air France spokeswoman tells AOL Travel News the Airbus A380 with 495 passengers and 25 crew onboard "was taxiing and the other one (plane) was parking" when the incident occurred around 8:09 p.m.

She says the carrier is cooperating with the National Transportation Safety Board in their investigation. "They are looking into the matter," the Air France spokeswoman says.

The A380 is the world's biggest commercial passenger plane.


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