NASA's Space Shuttle Endeavour begins new mission as museum attraction

NASA's Space Shuttle Endeavour is preparing for its final "launch"—not into space, but as the centerpiece of a major new museum exhibit in Los Angeles.

On November 13, 2026, the shuttle will officially open to the public at the California Science Center, where it has been painstakingly reassembled and mounted vertically beneath a massive new structure that expands the museum by more than 18,500 square meters, CE Report quotes ANSA.

Standing nearly 60 meters (197 feet) tall, the display will be the only place in the world where visitors can see an authentic Space Shuttle Endeavour in the vertical launch position used for space missions.

"This facility will be the only place in the world where an authentic Space Shuttle can be seen in the position from which it launched into space," said Jeffrey Rudolph, president and CEO of the California Science Center.

Unlike the other surviving shuttles—Space Shuttle Discovery at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, Space Shuttle Atlantis at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex, and the prototype Space Shuttle Enterprise at the Intrepid Museum—Endeavour will be displayed as a complete launch system, including the orbiter, twin solid rocket boosters, and the iconic 47-meter-tall orange external fuel tank.

The new museum wing, named the Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center, received significant financial support from the Samuel Oschin Foundation, led by Lynda Oschin.

Endeavour, NASA's fifth operational space shuttle after Space Shuttle Columbia, Space Shuttle Challenger, Discovery, and Atlantis, carried approximately 200 astronauts on missions between 1992 and 2011.

Among them were two Italian astronauts: Umberto Guidoni, who became the first European to reach the International Space Station aboard Endeavour in April 2001, and Roberto Vittori, who flew on the shuttle's final mission in 2011. Both have been invited to attend the November opening ceremony.

Construction of the Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center has cost $410 million so far. Building work lasted four years, while the complex vertical assembly of the shuttle took six months.

Endeavour arrived in Los Angeles in 2012 from the Kennedy Space Center aboard a modified Boeing 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft before making a slow journey through city streets to the museum, drawing thousands of spectators.

Visitors to the new center will be able to walk around the fully assembled launch system, experience interactive exhibits, ride a panoramic elevator alongside the shuttle, try a slide simulating atmospheric re-entry, and explore a replica of the shuttle's cockpit.

Admission to the exhibit will be free, with advance online reservations required.

Photo: Chat GPT