According to an artist's concept drawings, Enterprise will be displayed with its payload bay open, surrounded by interactive educational exhibits.Įndeavour will be sent west, joining the space exhibits at the California Science Center, where Mercury, Gemini and Apollo spacecraft are already on display. Too large to fit on the deck of the aircraft carrier and still have room for the other aircraft already on display, Enterprise will be housed in a planned glass-enclosed hangar that will sit alongside the Intrepid on Pier 86, where the museum's Concorde jet sits now. McDonnell Space Hangar, where it will serve as the centerpiece for an exhibit hall already filled with other historic space artifacts.Īs Discovery moves in, Enterprise will be shipped up the coast to the Intrepid in New York. Īt the National Air and Space Museum's Udvar-Hazy just outside Washington, D.C., Discovery will be rolled into the James S. Cranes will offload the shuttles from the carrier aircraft at the recipient cities' airports and then, depending on the location, the orbiters will be further moved to their display buildings. "Not only will the workers who sent it into space so many times have a chance to still see it, the millions of visitors who come here every year to learn more about space and be a part of the excitement of exploration will be able to see what is still a great rarity, an actual flown space vehicle."īolden also announced that the atmospheric test orbiter Enterprise, which has belonged to the Smithsonian since 1982 and has been on display at the Udvar-Hazy Center since 2003, will be transferred to the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum, a converted aircraft carrier docked to a pier in New York City, to make way for Discovery to enter the national collection.Īt present, NASA plans to have the shuttles ready to ship to their museums by early- to mid-next year.įor those going to sites outside of Florida, the orbiters will be attached to the back of NASA's modified Boeing 747 airliner and ferried to their new homes. "The Kennedy Space Center, where every shuttle mission and so many other historic space flights have originated, will showcase my old friend Atlantis," stated Bolden, who as an astronaut flew one of his four missions on Atlantis. Shuttle Atlantis will remain in Florida to be exhibited at the spaceport's official visitor complex after launching on the 135th and last mission of NASA's shuttle program in late June. "The California Science Center in Los Angeles only a few miles from the site of the old Rockwell plant where the shuttle was developed and from where its construction was managed," Bolden said. The shuttle Endeavour, which will launch on its own final mission later this month, will be given to the California Science Center, a department of the State of California, in Los Angeles. Udvar-Hazy Center near Dulles International Airport. Space shuttle Discovery, NASA's oldest remaining orbiter and the world's most flown spacecraft, will be displayed by the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum at its Steven F. Bolden's announcement means that NASA space shuttles will eventually go on display on both coasts of the U.S., with three along the East Coast.
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