The space shuttle Endeavour landed at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center in California on Thursday, after being carried atop a Boeing 747.

The Dryden Flight Research Center is located at Edwards Air Force Base in Mojave Desert, north of Los Angeles.

The Edwards Air Force Base was originally the main landing site for NASA's shuttle program, before the space agency built a landing facility for the orbiters at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Edwards then became the main backup landing site for the shuttle program, in case of bad weather at Cape Canaveral.

Endeavour is scheduled to take off again for its final ferry flight to Los Angeles International Airport on Friday (September 21).

The spacecraft will then undergo preparations to be moved 12 miles (19km) through city streets from the airport to its permanent home at the California Science Center in downtown Los Angeles. This is where the shuttle will be put on public display starting on the 30th of October.

Endeavour has flown 25 missions in space and logged nearly 123 million miles (198 million km) in flight during 4,671 orbits.

It was added to the shuttle fleet after the shuttle Challenger was destroyed by an accidental explosion that killed seven astronauts in 1986.