The retired space shuttle Endeavour sets off Friday for a road trip unlike any of its previous journeys, one that will see it crawl through the streets of Los Angeles instead of hurtling through the solitary reaches of space.
Endeavour will nose out of Los Angeles International Airport as it begins a two-day ground journey atop a massive wheeled transporter to its final resting place at the California Science Center on the edge of downtown.

“It’s a national treasure — something that we all paid for with our taxes,” Ken Phillips, aerospace curator at the science centre, said of the hulking craft that flew from 1992 to 2011 and will go on display later this month.