For 11 years, Endeavour was displayed in a temporary hangar, the Samuel Oschin Pavilion, as the museum worked on a permanent home. When the shuttle was stacked with its external tank and solid rocket boosters at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the assembly was done inside NASA’s Vehicle Assembly Building - one of the largest by volume in the world, rising more than 50 stories and equipped with plenty of cranes and platforms from which to work.Ī veteran of 25 space trips from 1992 to 2011, Endeavour made its last flight in 2012, ending a cross-country journey at Los Angeles International Airport before undertaking a three-day trek along city streets to the California Science Center.
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“This has never been done like this before, with cranes and outside and at a construction site,” he said. “Wind and wings don’t go well on a crane,” Rudolph said. “And then the challenge is actually bringing the orbiter - ‘capturing it’ - at the three attach points.”īecause Endeavour is essentially a glider with a massive wingspan, it’ll be difficult to guide it down if there are strong winds. “There are a few places where there’s some challenging parts in the lowering of it because of the tight fit with the wings and vertical stabilizer,” he said. With the Endeavour orbiter - the last space shuttle ever built - crews will need to maneuver an object with a 78-foot wingspan and get “everything absolutely level and aligned properly, and extremely gently,” Rudolph said. The tank is so large that, as it was lowered, there was less than an inch of space between it and the solid rocket boosters. There are different challenges lifting the shuttle than the external tank, which was completed earlier this month. Nothing should change after that until the museum opens the payload bay doors in a few years when Endeavour is ready for public display, Rudolph said. An opening date for the new $400 million center has not yet been determined.California Space shuttle Endeavour makes one more voyage to its final destination at a new space centerĪfter being on display at the California Science Center for more than a decade, the Endeavor began it’s final move to a new center as it’s permanent home. The addition of ET-94 to the vertical display will leave the star attraction - the shuttle Endeavour itself - as the only component left to move. That assembly includes the aft skirts or base of the boosters, along with the116-foot-long rocket motors and the “forward assembly,” or cone-shaped tops. Vertical assembly of the twin 149-foot tall rocket boosters was completed in early December. Thursday or early Friday morning, and then lower it into vertical position alongside two already-standing solid rocket boosters. With the tank in place, a heavy-duty crane will be used to lift it into the air sometime after 10 p.m. Greeted by cheering throng, giant engines arrive at LA museum for reunion with Shuttle Endeavour.
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Space Shuttle Endeavour solid rocket motor is hoisted into place at California Science Center.Towering 116-foot shuttle engines standing tall in LA joining them soon – Endeavour herself.Shuttle Endeavour’s boosters get cone tops at California Science Center.Space Shuttle Endeavour drew final admirers at California Science Center.Wednesday, crews employed a “self-propelled modular transporter” for the tank’s 1,000-foot journey past the Science Center building and the Exposition Park Rose Garden to the site of the under-construction Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center, which will house the one-of-a-kind shuttle display.