Virginia U.S. Sens. Kaine, Warner seek to keep Discovery space shuttle in the commonwealth

(VIRGINIA MERCURY) - One of Virginia’s crown jewels of tourist attractions, the Discovery Space Shuttle, could be blasting off somewhere else as U.S. Sens. Mark Warner and Tim Kaine seek to prevent the move from its home in Virginia to Texas.

The effort to relocate the space shuttle comes as support has increased for moving it to the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, which is considered central to the United States’ human spaceflight program. Republican U.S. Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, both from Texas, are pushing the relocation effort. The ship has been at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum in Chantilly since 2012.

Last week, the senators wrote a letter to Senate appropriators, hoping to block federal funding includ