We’ve been watching with eager anticipation for today’s announcement on where the retired Space Shuttles will land. But it is not looking good for Seattle’s Museum of Flight, once considered one of the top bidders. The Seattle Times reports, citing an unnamed source, that the museum will not get one of the coveted space vehicles.

Few details are available at this time, and we’ll keep tracking the story this morning. But it doesn’t look too promising.

Seattle’s Museum of Flight was one of 27 bidders for two three of the remaining space vehicles, with the Discovery slated to go to the Smithsonian. And now it looks like the Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum in New York will get the prototype Enterprise shuttle, considered the best shot for Seattle’s Museum of Flight, according to the New York Daily News.

The California Science Center in Los Angeles is expected to get one of the shuttles, as will the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The Museum of Flight, backed by the entire Washington state Congressional delegation, the State House and Senate, and Governor Christine Gregoire, made a strong argument to receive one of the shuttles on its website.

“We believe that our mission to be the foremost educational air and space museum in the country, along with Washington state’s extensive contributions to aerospace innovation, make us uniquely qualified to be the final home for one of the shuttles. We are eager to hear NASA’s decision,” says the Museum of Flight President and CEO Douglas King, in a news release.

Unfortunately, it looks like that decision has come, and Seattle will be left on the sidelines.

Here’s the live broadcast of the decision, which is being made from Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

UPDATE: Here’s the official decision: The Kennedy Space Center in Florida will get the Atlantis; The California Science Center in L.A. will get the Endeavour; The Smithsonian in D.C. will get the Discovery; and The Intrepid Sea Air and Space Museum in New York will get the Enterprise. Other organizations which bid for the orbiters will get “shuttle hardware and artifacts.”


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Here’s more on the bidding for the space shuttles:

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