When that happens, it’ll be the only shuttle displayed vertically. But the museum has towering plans for the shuttle: It’s going to move it into a vertical position, and display it with solid rocket boosters and an external fuel tank, all attached together as if the ship was about to blast off into space.
Right now, that space shuttle, which made 25 trips to space and back, is on display horizontally at the California Science Center in Los Angeles. And don’t forget about Enterprise in New York City, a shuttle that never flew into space but did glide through the atmosphere. You could travel to Virginia and see Discovery, or journey to the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida to check out the angled Atlantis. If you want to see a retired NASA space shuttle, you have a few options. The orbiter’s construction was completed in 1991 in Southern California by Rockwell International, a replacement to the original fleet’s Space Shuttle Challenger that exploded in 1986.The space shuttle Endeavour's final flight was on May 16, 2011. It flew on its final mission, STS-134, from May 16-June 1, 2011, the penultimate space flight of the Space Shuttle Program ahead of Atlantis’ STS-135 mission two months later.Įndeavour flew 25 missions, carrying 173 crew members and traveling more than 122 million miles. Discovery had already made its way to Virginia and Atlantis was staying put.Įndeavour, the fifth operational orbiter of the shuttle program after Columbia, Challenger, Discovery and Atlantis, had its first space flight on STS-49 launching from Kennedy Space Center on May 7, 1992. 19, 2012 riding atop NASA’s modified 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft, taking off from KSC’s Shuttle Landing Facility, the last flight so to speak of the Space Shuttle Program. The orbiter left Florida for the last time on Sept. The NASA 747 ferrying the space shuttle Endeavour gains altitude to leave central Florida, as seen passing over the spires of Space Mountain at sunrise, at the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World, in Lake Buena Vista, Fla. By putting the whole system on display it will allow us to talk more about the engineering and science behind it and what it takes to go into space.” “The orbiter alone could not go into space. “It will be an incredibly dramatic display, but it will also allow us to put on display the whole system,” said Jeffrey Rudolph, president and CEO of the museum. Officials were on hand Wednesday to break ground on the new Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center at the museum, where it will become the only place people will be able to see the shuttle in that position. Its future though will see the orbiter remated with the last intact external fuel tank and solid rocket boosters and put on display vertically for the public to see. It has since made the cross-country trip to its new home at the California Science Center in Los Angeles where it has been on display resting horizontally since 2012. It’s been 11 years since Space Shuttle Endeavour finished its last mission landing at Kennedy Space Center on June 1, 2011.