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25, 2024 ahead of their planned launch on March 1 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket aboard the Crew Dragon Endeavour. “You know they always save the best for last.” The four members of the SpaceX Crew-8 mission to the International Space Station arrive to Kennedy Space Center at the former shuttle landing facility on Sunday, Feb. You get that launch, you get the mission and you go,” she said after arriving Sunday to KSC with her crewmates. So even though you’re the last, it doesn’t matter. “I guess any launch is a great launch if you have a mission. She had previously been assigned to both a Soyuz mission and a Boeing CST-100 Starliner mission to the ISS, but after a reassignment took her off the Soyuz trip and delays piled up on Boeing’s Starliner program, Epps was finally shifted to the SpaceX Crew-8 mission. It could be a few years before it is open to the public, given the construction schedule and additional time needed to install exhibits.KENNEDY SPACE CENTER - NASA astronaut Jeanette Epps has had to get comfy in three different spacecraft seats, but while she said she would have fit in any of them, it’s the SpaceX Crew Dragon Endeavour set to lift off this week that ended up being the one that was just right.Ĭhosen as one of nine NASA astronaut candidates in 2009, Epps is the last of her classmates to fly into space. Once the shuttle full stack is in place, the rest of the museum will be built around it. Such “diagrids” have been used in other tall buildings, including the 46-story Hearst Tower in New York City, the iconic 40-story ovular Gherkin skyscraper in London and a section of the egg-shaped London City Hall.
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It will feature a a diagonal grid developed by engineering firm Arup and covered by a stainless-steel facade. To keep views unobstructed, the building has been engineered with no vertical supports except its walls.
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The full-stack configuration is so tall that the new museum will rise 20 stories to make room for it. For 11 years, Endeavour was displayed in a temporary hangar, the Samuel Oschin Pavilion, as the museum worked on a permanent home. When the shuttle was stacked with its external tank and solid rocket boosters at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the assembly was done inside NASA’s Vehicle Assembly Building - one of the largest by volume in the world, rising more than 50 stories and equipped with plenty of cranes and platforms from which to work.Ī veteran of 25 space trips from 1992 to 2011, Endeavour made its last flight in 2012, ending a cross-country journey at Los Angeles International Airport before undertaking a three-day trek along city streets to the California Science Center. “This has never been done like this before, with cranes and outside and at a construction site,” he said. “Wind and wings don’t go well on a crane,” Rudolph said. “And then the challenge is actually bringing the orbiter - ‘capturing it’ - at the three attach points.”īecause Endeavour is essentially a glider with a massive wingspan, it’ll be difficult to guide it down if there are strong winds. “There are a few places where there’s some challenging parts in the lowering of it because of the tight fit with the wings and vertical stabilizer,” he said. With the Endeavour orbiter - the last space shuttle ever built - crews will need to maneuver an object with a 78-foot wingspan and get “everything absolutely level and aligned properly, and extremely gently,” Rudolph said.
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The tank is so large that, as it was lowered, there was less than an inch of space between it and the solid rocket boosters. There are different challenges lifting the shuttle than the external tank, which was completed earlier this month. Nothing should change after that until the museum opens the payload bay doors in a few years when Endeavour is ready for public display, Rudolph said. California Space shuttle Endeavour makes one more voyage to its final destination at a new space centerĪfter being on display at the California Science Center for more than a decade, the Endeavor began it’s final move to a new center as it’s permanent home.