#SPACE SHUTTLE ENDEAVOUR FINAL FLIGHT INSTALL#

Samuel Oschin Family Foundation have been transformational to building the new museum wing, which broke ground in mid-2022. Financial contributions that came from the Mr. The new aerospace museum wing is named for Samuel Oschin, the late Los Angeles businessman and philanthropist, whose name is also on the Griffith Observatory planetarium and the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center cancer institute. The site became the California Museum of Science and Industry in 1951, and reopened as the California Science Center in 1998.

The shuttle project, estimated to cost $400 million, will reshape the skyline around the California Science Center, whose roots stem from 110 years ago as a site for exhibiting agricultural and industrial projects. It could be a few years before the new museum is open to the public.

#SPACE SHUTTLE ENDEAVOUR FINAL FLIGHT INSTALL#

Once Endeavour is in place, the rest of the museum will be built around it, followed by the time it will take to install exhibits. Hopefully, that lift will also be a one-night operation. Weather permitting, before the end of the month, Endeavour will undertake its own lift into place. The move will be tricky: At one point, Endeavour will need to be jacked up - to avoid striking a building - moved and then jacked back down for the rest of the journey. Then, the orbiter will move down State Drive. It'll first be rolled onto the lawn just north of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and south of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.

Later this month, Endeavour will begin to be moved out of the hangar, on the western edge of the science center, Rudolph said. The hangar is being dismantled to make way for Endeavour's move. During launches, the external tank carried propellants - liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen - that powered the space shuttle's three main engines to help bring the shuttle into orbit.Īfter the external tank is put into position, work will begin to move Endeavour out of its existing exhibit space, the temporary hangar known as the Samuel Oschin Space Shuttle Endeavour Pavilion, where the orbiter had been on display for about 11 years, until it closed on New Year's Eve. The 15-story orange external tank, the last of its kind in existence, arrived in Los Angeles in 2016, on a journey by sea through the Panama Canal and into Marina del Rey, before also lumbering through the streets to the Science Center. At liftoff, the white rocket boosters were set underneath the shuttle's wings and produced more than 80% of the lift. The external tank will then be attached to components that were installed in recent months - the twin solid rocket boosters, which began to be installed in a months-long process that started over the summer. The other crane will then lift the tank into its final position. Then, the external tank will be slowly turned upright to a vertical orientation, and one of the cranes will be disconnected. Two cranes will be used initially to lift up the external tank from its horizontal position. Assuming that holds into early January, we'll try taking advantage of that six-hour window to lift the tank and get it in to the pit,' said Dennis Jenkins, project director for the Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center. 'The trend, at least in December, was for the winds to die down about 10 p.m. Because the move is taking place outdoors, any significant winds could lead to delays in the big move, and the museum doesn't want a very big thing swinging off a crane in significant winds. 11 and into the next morning, the external tank is to be lifted, starting sometime after 10 p.m. The journey will take about two hours, past the science center and the Exposition Park Rose Garden. 10, when the it will be moved by self-propelled modular transporters - similar to the ones used to move Endeavour through city streets in 2012 - down State Drive to the new museum wing's construction site. The prelude to the external tank's big lift is scheduled for Jan. 'Show time!' said Jeffrey Rudolph, president of the California Science Center.

Space shuttle endeavour final flight