Watch a crane lift space shuttle Endeavour into place for museum exhibit early Jan. 30 (video) (Image Credit: Space.com)
The space shuttle Endeavour will be lifted into place at its museum-exhibit home early Tuesday morning (Jan. 30), and you can watch the action live.
A 450-foot-tall (137 meters) crane will install Endeavour at its designated spot in the California Science Center “in a massive and technically challenging process that has never before been accomplished outside of a NASA or Air Force facility,” museum representatives said in a description of the event.
You can watch it live here at Space.com, courtesy of the California Science Center, or directly via the Los Angeles museum, beginning at 12:30 a.m. EST (0530 GMT). It’s unclear how long the lift will take.
Related: End of year, end of exhibit: Space shuttle Endeavour goes off view for a few years
The crane lift marks the culmination of “Go for Stack,” a six-month-long effort to get Endeavour, its two solid rocket boosters and its external fuel tank into their final vertical configuration, as they looked on launch day.
But that doesn’t mean you’ll be able to see the Endeavour display just yet.
“The future Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center is a major expansion of the California Science Center and will be Endeavour’s permanent home,” the museum’s description reads. “Construction is expected to continue for the next 18 months, followed by artifact and exhibit installation. An opening date has not yet been announced.”
Endeavour, NASA’s youngest shuttle, flew 25 missions before the shuttle program was retired in 2011.
The agency’s other surviving space-flown shuttles, Discovery and Atlantis, are at the National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Virginia and the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida, respectively.
