The external fuel tank built to launch explorers and equipment into space tilted skyward via a different mechanism on Friday morning, but the mission remains one step away from completion.
Space Shuttle Endeavor’s giant orange tank, called ET-94, was lifted by crane overnight and prepared to be placed vertically between two 149-foot solid rocket boosters. But after 14 hours of work, engineers postponed the final installation until 9 a.m. due to high winds that repeatedly hindered the move.
The shuttle’s fuel tank and vertical stack of twin rocket boosters are part of an ambitious exhibit under construction at the new Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center.
Work is scheduled to resume at 10 p.m. Friday, when engineers hope wind speeds will drop to 3 mph or less.
The initial lift was delayed 3.5 hours due to high winds, but crews eventually used two cranes to lift the massive tank, which weighs nearly 65,000 pounds and is 154 feet long.
Engineers were able to position the tank just before 7 a.m. and then waited two hours before delaying the final step; The tank was slowly placed between the solid rocket boosters positioned two months ago.
“It’s pretty amazing to see this process,” said Jeffrey Rudolph, president of the California Science Center.
Completion of this move will mark the fourth of seven landmarks in the eventual goal of Endeavor being stacked and displayed upright in the new 20-story museum, an expansion of the California Science Center.
Unlike other exhibits that feature a retired space shuttle, Endeavor will be configured in a full-stack arrangement facing the stars as if it were ready for launch. The shuttle was previously displayed horizontally at the science center from October 2012 until New Year’s Eve 2023, when preparations for its big move began in earnest.
All that’s left is Endeavor’s final pass into the new area, after which the orbiter is lifted into place by a crane and eventually merges with the rest of the stack. This is expected to happen within a month. It will be the first time a shuttle designed for space will be mounted vertically outside a NASA or Air Force facility.
Once Endeavor is in place, scaffolding will be erected around the entire pile to protect the equipment as the rest of the museum is built around it. It may be several years before the new museum opens to the public.
Read more: Space shuttle Endeavor gets its own major museum with display at launch location in Los Angeles
The last of its kind, the 15-story orange external tank, arrived in Los Angeles in 2016 on a sea voyage via the Panama Canal to Marina del Rey. At launch, 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.
It was maneuvered to the site Wednesday by self-propelled modular transporters similar to those used to transport Endeavor through the streets of Los Angeles in 2012.
A team of about 35 workers used a Liebherr LG 1750 crane to lift the ET-94 on Friday. Rudolph said the same crane, capable of lifting 1.7 million pounds, was used in 2011 to demolish the Kennedy Space Center launch pad in Florida that Endeavor used on its last space mission.
Retired space shuttle engineer Larry Clark, who worked at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida for 44 years, said the new exhibit will give his grandchildren a chance to see history.
“All of my grandchildren were born after I retired from the space shuttle program,” Clark said. “My 6-year-old grandson recently asked me when he would see a space shuttle, and now he has a place to visit in California.”
The shuttle project, which is estimated to cost $400 million, will reshape the silhouette of the California Science Center, where agricultural and industrial projects dating back 110 years are exhibited. The site became the California Museum of Science and Industry in 1951 and reopened as the California Science Center in 1998.
The new aviation museum wing is named for Samuel Oschin, the late Los Angeles businessman and philanthropist who was also housed at the Griffith Observatory planetarium and the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center cancer institute. Financial contributions from the Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Oschin Family Foundation have transformed the construction of the new museum wing, which broke ground in mid-2022.
Endeavor flew 25 missions in space before its final flight in 2011; This was eight years after another shuttle, Columbia, broke up on reentry in 2003 and the shuttle fleet was retired. Endeavor’s most notable missions included successfully repairing the Hubble Space Telescope and helping complete construction of the International Space Station.
The ET-94 fuel tank was created shortly before the ill-fated Columbia’s final march. killed seven astronauts.
Although the tank never touched the stars, its journey to the Space Center was not dramatic.
Manufactured at New Orleans’ Michoud Assembly Plant, the ET-94 was placed on a barge and towed Left port on 13 April 2016. Twelve days later the tank crossed the Panama Canal but not before running into a storm near the Cayman Islands.
The journey slowed down again a month later when the towing vessel Shannon Dann rescued four stranded fishermen. Off the coast of Baja California.
The tank eventually arrived in Marina del Rey on May 21, 2016, completing a 5,000-mile sea voyage and was transported 26 miles to the California Science Center.
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This story was first published in the Los Angeles Times.