It’ll be parked there for a couple of days as crews prepare equipment to move it to the eastern edge of the science center. It’ll first be rolled onto the lawn just north of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and south of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. The same month, Endeavour will be moved from its temporary hangar, on the western edge of the California Science Center. The most dramatic part of installation will come as early as January when the 66,000-pound, 154-foot long external tank - the last of its kind in existence - will be rolled out and hoisted by cranes into a vertical position. In a dramatic finale that could come as early as January, cranes - the tallest of which will be about the height of City Hall - will raise the spacecraft from its horizontal position to point vertically for its final display, where the rest of the museum will then be built around it. It could be years before Endeavour will again be available for up-close viewing to museum guests. 31 before the shuttle is carefully moved to the new building site. It also marks the countdown for Endeavour to conclude its exhibition in a horizontal position, which will end Dec. Thursday’s announcement comes about a year after ground was broken on the Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center. Even a slight misalignment could cause major problems later on - making it impossible to connect the solid rocket boosters to the external tank, and the external tank to Endeavour. “You could arguably say the most critical piece to put in because they determine how everything else works,” said Dennis Jenkins, project director for the Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center. Eventually, all half-million pounds of the full stack - including the shuttle Endeavour and a giant orange external tank - will rest on the base of the solid rocket boosters, bolted to the ground by eight supersized, superalloy fasteners that are 9 feet long and weigh 500 to 600 pounds. It’ll be the first of many delicate maneuvers conducted over roughly six months (if the weather cooperates). Workers will use a 300-ton crane to lower the bottom sections of the twin solid rocket boosters, which are 10,000 pounds apiece and roughly 9 feet tall, to the freshly built lowest section of the partly constructed $400-million Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center. To get ready for the grand move, the state-run museum announced Thursday that crews will begin the installation of the base of the shuttle’s full stack on July 20. Only the last flight of the shuttle Atlantis, scheduled for July, is left on NASA's calendar.After more than a decade on display at the California Science Center, the space shuttle Endeavour will begin the final trek to its permanent home at a new Los Angeles building in the coming months. Endeavour, which first flew in 1992, is due to land on June 1, and will eventually be put on display at a science museum in Los Angeles. This is the 25th and final flight of Endeavour, which was built after the shuttle Challenger exploded shortly after a launching in 1986, killing all seven astronauts on board. Once docked at the station, the astronauts will begin work on the 16-day mission's main objective: installing the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, a giant magnet designed to search for particles of the elusive "dark matter," which is thought to pervade the universe. About 40 minutes into the flight, the crew fired other engines to alter the shuttle's orbit so that it could meet up with the International Space Station on Wednesday, more than 200 miles above the Earth. NASA officials said the shuttle's three main engines performed well during the 8 1/2-minute ascent, and that the power system that had been the source of the electrical problem functioned perfectly.
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