An external fuel tank, crafted to propel explorers and equipment into space, was tilted skyward Friday morning via a different mechanism, but fell one step short of completing the mission.
Space Shuttle Endeavor’s giant orange tank, named ET-94, was lifted overnight by crane and ready to be placed vertically between two 44-meter-high rocket boosters. But after 14 hours of work, engineers postponed the final installation at 9 a.m. due to gusts of wind, which repeatedly hampered the move.
The shuttle’s vertical stack — consisting of the fuel tank and twin rocket boosters — is part of an ambitious exhibit under construction at the new Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center.
Work is expected to resume at 10pm on Friday, when engineers hope winds will drop to 5km/h or less.
The initial lift was delayed 3½ hours by gusty winds, but crews eventually used two cranes to raise the massive tank, which weighs about 50,000 pounds and is 150 feet long.
Engineers were able to position the tank just before 7 a.m. and then waited two hours before delaying the final step: carefully placing the tank between the solid rocket boosters that had been placed two months ago.
“It’s amazing to see this process,” said Jeffrey Rudolph, president of the California Science Center.
The completion of the move marks the fourth of seven markers in the ultimate goal to stack Endeavor upright and display it in what will become the new 20-story museum, an extension of the California Science Center.
Unlike any other exhibit showcasing a retired space shuttle, Endeavor will be configured in a full-stack setup, pointing toward the stars as if ready for launch. The shuttle was on display at the science center in a horizontal position from October 2012 through New Year’s Eve 2023, when preparations for the big move began in earnest.
What remains is Endeavor’s final migration to the new location, followed by the orbiter being lifted into place by crane and finally joined to the rest of the stack. This is expected to happen within a month. It will be the first time a shuttle designed for space has been mounted vertically outside a NASA or Air Force facility.
Once Endeavor is in place, scaffolding will be built around the entire stack to protect the equipment while the rest of the museum is built around it. It may take a few years before the new museum is open to the public.
Read more: Space shuttle Endeavor will have its own large museum in LA, displayed in launch position
The fifteen-story orange external tank, the last of its kind in existence, arrived in Los Angeles in 2016, on a sea voyage through the Panama Canal to Marina del Rey. During launches, the external tank carried propellants – liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen – that powered the space shuttle’s three main engines to put the shuttle into orbit.
It was maneuvered to the construction site on Wednesday by self-driving modular transport vehicles, similar to the ones used to move the Endeavor through the streets of Los Angeles in 2012.
A crew of about 35 workers used a Liebherr LG 1750 crane to retrieve the ET-94 on Friday. The same crane, which can lift 1.7 million pounds, was used in 2011 to demolish the launch pad at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida that Endeavor used on its last space mission, Rudolph said.
Larry Clark, a retired space shuttle engineer 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.
“My grandchildren were all born after we shut down the Space Shuttle program,” Clark said. “My six-year-old granddaughter recently asked me when she was going to see a space shuttle, and now she has a place to visit in California.”
The shuttle project, estimated to cost $400 million, will reshape the skyline around the California Science Center, whose roots date back 110 years as a venue for showcasing agricultural and industrial projects. The site became the California Museum of Science and Industry in 1951 and reopened in 1998 as the California Science Center.
The new wing of the air and space museum is named after Samuel Oschin, the late Los Angeles businessman and philanthropist whose name also appears on the planetarium at the Griffith Observatory and the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center cancer institute. The financial contributions from Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Oschin Family Foundation have had a huge impact on the construction of the new museum wing, which broke ground in mid-2022.
Endeavor flew 25 missions in space before its last flight in 2011, eight years after another shuttle, Columbia, disintegrated on return in 2003 and the shuttle fleet was retired. One of Endeavor’s most notable missions was successfully repairing the Hubble Space Telescope and helping complete construction of the International Space Station.
The ET-94 fuel tank was made shortly before the final voyage of the ill-fated Columbia seven astronauts killed.
Although the tank never touched the stars, its journey to the Space Center was not without drama.
Manufactured at the Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, the ET-94 was placed on a barge and towed from port on April 13, 2016. Twelve days later the tank crossed the Panama Canal, but not before being caught in a storm near the Cayman Islands.
The voyage was delayed again when the towing vessel, the Shannon Dann, rescued four stranded fishermen a month later off the coast of Baja California.
The tank finally reached Marina del Rey on May 21, 2016, completing a sea voyage of 8,000 miles, and was transported 26 miles to the California Science Center.
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This story originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.