Space Shuttle Endeavour at Los Angeles science museum

LOS ANGELES

NASA's retired Space Shuttle Endeavour was carefully hoisted late on Jan. 30 to be mated to a huge external fuel tank and its two solid rocket boosters at a Los Angeles museum where it will be uniquely displayed as if it is about to blast off.

A massive crane delicately began lifting the orbiter, which is 37 meters long and has a 24-meter wingspan, into the partially built Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center at the California Science Center in Exposition Park.

The building will be completed around Endeavour before the display opens to the public.

The 20-story-tall display stands atop an 1,800-ton concrete slab supported by six so-called base isolators to protect Endeavour from earthquakes.

All parts of the vertical launch configuration are authentic components of the shuttle system, including the rust-colored external tank, which was flight-qualified.

Endeavour flew 25 missions between 1992 and 2011, when NASA’s shuttle program ended.

The shuttle was flown to Los Angeles International Airport in 2012 atop a NASA Boeing 747 and then created a spectacle as it was inched through tight city streets to Exposition Park. The external tank arrived by barge and made a similar trip across the city.

The shuttle was initially displayed horizontally in a temporary exhibit hall. A groundbreaking ceremony for the Air and Space Center was held in 2022 on the 11th anniversary of Endeavour’s final return from space.

The process of assembling the shuttle system in vertical configuration was dubbed “Go for Stack,” an informal term for putting together rocket components for launch.

It began in July with precise installation of the bottom segments of the side boosters, known as aft skirts, for the first time outside of a NASA facility. In use, the boosters would be attached to the external tank to help the shuttle's main engines lift off.

The 116-foot-long (35.3-meter-long) rocket motors were trucked to Los Angeles from the Mojave Desert in October and were installed the following month.