NASA astronaut Gregory H. Johnson and his pal Steve Robinson were flying a T-38 today over the gulf and noticed this weird scene: the space shuttle cruising on board a barge. “Not something you see every day,” he says. Indeed!
The shuttle is the Explorer, the full shuttle replica that was installed Kennedy Space centre Visitor Complex, in Florida. Explorer — which obviously never flew to space — has been replaced by Atlantis. Explorer is now en route to the Johnson Space centre in Houston, Texas. [Twitter via Dvice]