Space Shuttle shuffle: America's museums fight for iconic craft as NASA plans its final retirement

It has been one of the most iconic sights in the sky over the last 30 years – a stark image of man’s triumph over gravity even more powerful than Concorde. But within the next 12 months, the Space Shuttle is set to become a museum piece – and America’s museums are currently battling to lay claim to one of the shuttles still in active service. Some 21 institutions across the USA hope to provide a retirement home for one of the three shuttles that will be up for grabs when NASA brings down the curtain on 30 years of escaping the planet's gravitational pull in 2011.

And competition is fierce, pitting state against state. Texas, where spaces shuttle flights are controlled and managed (at the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Houston) believes it should be at the front of the queue – as does Florida, where every shuttle mission has been launched from the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral. 

But California, where the shuttle has landed at Edwards Air Force Base, near Los Angeles, also wants to take care of a shuttle in its dotage – as do museums in New York, Ohio, Chicago, Seattle, Oklahoma and even Alabama. “Like anything rare, the orbiters will be hugely popular attractions,” Valerie Neal, the space history curator at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington told the Los Angeles Times, adding that the shuttle ranks as the most significant space-related artefact to become available to museums since hardware pertaining to the Apollo flights was decommissioned in the Seventies.

In all, six space shuttles were built. Enterprise was constructed for test purposes, and never flew in orbit. It is currently on display at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, an offshoot of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, at Washington’s Dulles Airport. Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour are all still in service - although Atlantis has embarked upon its last mission after flying the most recent shuttle foray into space, in May.

Enterprise was the first shuttle to fly, in 1977 – but Columbia was the first to go into orbit, achieving this feat in April 1981. Challenger infamously disintegrated shortly after launch in 1986. Columbia broke apart while re-entering Earth’s atmosphere in 2003. The final flight will take place in February next year, when Endeavour delivers parts to the International Space Station. 

Discovery has already been promised to the Smithsonian – but its arrival will see the release of Enterprise. Like Atlantis and Endeavour, the original shuttle will be available to buy – assuming any museum can meet the steep price tag. Each shuttle can be purchased for $28.8million (£18.4million) – and that doesn’t include the engine. NASA may replace the shuttle with Orion, a new generation of space craft capable of carrying up to six astronauts. A return of man to the Moon is pencilled in for 2020.