Unique 'Ready to Launch' Display of Space Shuttle Endeavour
- 2 hours ago
- 2 min read
Fifteen years after its retirement, the Space Shuttle Endeavour is set to dazzle museum visitors like never before.
When the new Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center opens at Los Angeles’ California Science Center in November, it will feature the famous NASA orbiter in its upright, ready-to-launch position, making it the first display of its kind.
California Science Center President and CEO Jeffrey Rudolph explains that “We thought it was the best way to show it. You see the whole system. You see what it takes from an engineering perspective and science to get into space. And it’s the most dramatic way to look at it. It’s a beautiful sight.”
Space Shuttle Endeavour is a retired orbiter from NASA's Space Shuttle program and the fifth and final operational Shuttle built. It embarked on its first mission in May 1992 and its 25th and final mission in May 2011.
Click to enlarge | Images credit: California Science Center
The dramatic display will be the centrepiece of the museum expansion (exterior of the new museum pictured above) and will be impossible for visitors to miss. The shuttle stack - complete with solid rocket boosters and the last surviving flight-qualified external fuel tank - stands nearly 200 feet tall inside the space built especially to house it. It’s meant to be viewed from various angles, from ground-level beneath its massive engines to a top-down view through a glass floor.
“You go up slowly, [the elevator] stops at different levels. You see inside where the payload is, and at every stop you see something else, and when you get to the top and you look down,” Lynda Oschin, the widow of entrepreneur and philanthropist Samuel Oschin, told the Los Angeles Times. “The view is just unbelievable. It’s breathtaking. I don’t know what other word I could use.”
The Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center opens to the public on 13 November 2026.