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Around sunrise Thursday, the shuttle was scheduled to leave Houston, riding piggyback on a jumbo jet. It's booked to stop at Biggs Army Airfield in El Paso, Texas, before heading to NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center, Calif. After spending a night there, the shuttle will head to Los Angeles International Airport on Friday. In mid-October, Endeavour will be transported down city streets to the California Science Center, its permanent home. NASA still plays a large role in Houston, and astronaut Clayton Anderson, who lived on the International Space Station from June to November 2007, encouraged people to focus on a new era of space exploration. "The shuttles are a wonderful legacy, a huge part of Houston, but now it's time to look to the future," said Anderson, who lives in the Houston suburb of League City. This is the last flight for a space shuttle. Atlantis will remain at Kennedy for display, and Discovery is already at the Smithsonian Institution, parked at a hangar in Virginia since April. Endeavour -- the replacement for the destroyed Challenger shuttle -- made its debut in 1992 and flew 25 times before it was retired. It logged 123 million miles in space and circled Earth nearly 4,700 times.
[Associated
Press;
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