![]() ![]() It will be a crowning achievement 11 years after the last space shuttle built captivated Californians as it made its final flight aboard a Boeing 747, past the Golden Gate Bridge and Hollywood sign, before landing in L.A. In a dramatic finale that could come as early as January, cranes – the tallest of which will be about the height of City Hall – will raise the spacecraft from its horizontal position to point vertically for its final display, where the rest of the museum will then be built around it. It could be years before Endeavour will again be available for up-close viewing to museum guests. 31 before the shuttle is carefully moved to the new building site. It also marks the countdown for Endeavour to conclude its exhibition in a horizontal position, which will end Dec. Thursday’s announcement comes about a year after ground was broken on the Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center. ![]() ![]() Even a slight misalignment could cause major problems later on – making it impossible to connect the solid rocket boosters to the external tank, and the external tank to Endeavour. “You could arguably say (the base of the boosters are) the most critical piece to put in because they determine how everything else works,” said Dennis Jenkins, project director for the Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center. Eventually, all half-million pounds of the full stack – including the shuttle Endeavour and a giant orange external tank – will rest on the base of the solid rocket boosters, bolted to the ground by eight supersized, superalloy fasteners that are 9 feet long and weigh 500 to 600 pounds. It’ll be the first of many delicate maneuvers conducted over roughly six months (if the weather cooperates). Workers will use a 300-ton crane to lower the bottom sections of the twin solid rocket boosters, which are 10,000 pounds apiece and roughly 9 feet tall, to the freshly built lowest section of the partly constructed $400-million Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center. To get ready for the grand move, the state-run museum announced Thursday that crews will begin the installation of the base of the shuttle’s full stack on July 20. This is why the name is spelled in the British English manner, rather than the American English spelling of "Endeavor." This has caused confusion, most notably when NASA themselves misspelled a sign on the launch pad in 2007.LOS ANGELES – After more than a decade on display at the California Science Center, the space shuttle Endeavour will begin the final trek to its permanent home at a new Los Angeles building in the coming months. Bush presented awards to each school The orbiter is named after HM Bark Endeavour, the ship commanded by 18th century explorer James Cook the name also honored Endeavour, the Apollo Command/Service Module of Apollo 15. They were honored at several ceremonies in Washington, D.C., including a White House ceremony where then-President George H.W. The national winners were selected based on the quality of the project submitted with their entries. The national winners were Senatobia Middle School in Senatobia, Miss., in the elementary division and Tallulah Falls School in Tallulah Falls, Ga., in the upper school division. Endeavour was the most popular entry, accounting for almost one-third of the state-level winnersįor example, Utah's state level winner, Nolan Butcher, a sixth grade student from Nibley Park Elementary school located in Salt Lake City Utah, selected Endeavour because some definitions of the word mean to be bold and put forth great effort. Entries included an essay about the name, the story behind it and why it was appropriate for a NASA shuttle, and the project that supported the name. The decision to build Endeavour was favored over refitting Space Shuttle Enterprise on cost grounds.Įndeavour was named through a national competition involving students in elementary and secondary schools. Structural spares from the construction of Space Shuttle Discovery and Space Shuttle Atlantis, two of the three remaining operating shuttles at the time, were used in its assembly. The United States Congress authorized the construction of Endeavour in 1987 to replace Space Shuttle Challenger, which was lost in an accident in 1986. (The other two are Space Shuttle Discovery and Space Shuttle Atlantis.) Endeavour was the fifth and final NASA space shuttle to be built.Įndeavour is currently in the Orbiter Processing Facility being prepared for its next space shuttle mission, STS-127, currently slated to launch as early as from Launch Pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center. Space Shuttle Endeavour is one of the three currently operational Space Shuttle orbiters in the Space Shuttle fleet of NASA, the space agency of the United States. ![]()
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