Endeavour's meandering final voyage to its new home

Space shuttle Endeavour is in the midst of a final journey that began earlier this week in Florida, flying across the country on the back of a jumbo jet, making curtain calls along the way, en route to Los Angeles International Airport. From there, it will begin a two-day, 1-mile-per-hour trip through city streets on top of a special transporter, to its ultimate destination—the California Science Center, which won a spirited competition last year to get the retired NASA shuttle.

You can follow #spottheshuttle on Twitter for pictures, videos and other accounts of Endeavour's farewell tour.

Ken Phillips, a 1976 graduate of the Johns Hopkins Whiting School of Engineering, is curator for aerospace science at the California Science Center. He spoke with NPR about the difficulty of transporting the massive shuttle across L.A.

"You couldn't take the tail off it," Phillips says. "You can't pull the wings off and do things like we could with other aircraft."

So the iconic shuttle will be a surreal sight, moving slowly down wide commercial boulevards and passing places like Starbucks coffee shops and fast-food joints.