NASA on Tuesday is expected to announce where its space shuttles will spend their remaining days.
NASA Administrator Charles Bolden will hold a briefing at 1pm tomorrow from Kennedy Space Center to unveil which four institutions will recieve an orbiter from one of the shuttles.
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported that Seattle's Museum of Flight is one of 27 sites hoping to receive an orbiter from Atlantis, Endeavour, or Enterprise. The National Air and Space Museum is expected to get the shuttle Discovery in exchange for Enterprise, the paper reported.
"There's no better Space on earth," the Museum of Flight said on its Web site. "After 134 missions, don't you think she deserves a nice classroom, a view of the sky, and payloads of curious children?"
Other locations vying for a shuttle include the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, New York's Intrepid Sea, Air, and Space Museum, the National Museum of the United States Air Force in Ohio, and the Adler Planetarium in Chicago, Illinois, among others.
NASA isn't just handing over the shuttles free of charge. If you're an educational institution or museum interested in taking one of the shuttles off NASA's hands, it could set you back almost $30 million. A 2010 document about shuttle placement says that "the cost to complete display preparation for each Orbiter and ferry the Orbiter to its ultimate display location is updated to $28.8 million."
"We look forward to moving our retired Orbiters to museums and science centers across the country to inspire the next generation of explorers," Bolden said during a March appearance before Congress.
Bolden's Tuesday appearance will actually be to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the first space shuttle launch, the Columbia. Tuesday is also the 50th anniversary of the first human space flight, conducted by Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin.
The space shuttle Endeavour is scheduled to launch on April 29, with Atlantis set for June 28. Discovery returned from its last flight to the International Space Station on March 9.
For more of Gagarin's flight, see the slideshow below.