When the boosters' donation was first announced, the California Science Center was targeting 2019 for the opening of Endeavour's vertical display in the planned Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center. "Northrop Grumman and NASA are providing most of the smaller parts, like booster separation motors, from surplus."
"As for the non-motor parts of the booster, we sourced a set of flight-representative aft skirts and frustums from NASA surplus and a set of forward skirts that were used for tests for NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) program that are currently in Utah," said Jenkins. Dennis Jenkins, a veteran shuttle engineer and director of the science center's project to display Endeavour, made the request to Northrop Grumman (at the time, Orbital ATK, which Northrop Grumman acquired in 2018), which led to the donation. Towards that goal, the science center originally obtained a pair of boosters assembled from a mix of flight-worthy, test and mock parts that had been on display at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida.īut after obtaining NASA's final flight-worthy external tank, ET-94, in 2016, and conducting a review of the display plans, it was decided that a set of flight-worthy boosters were also needed to meet seismic and structural standards. Since debuting Endeavour on horizontal display in 2012, the California Science Center has planned to exhibit the winged spacecraft vertically, as if it was back on the launch pad, stacked with a fuel tank and solid rocket boosters.
"We are excited to share a piece of our more than 30-year legacy with future generations to help inspire a new era of explorers," Charlie Precourt, Northrop Grumman's vice president for propulsion systems and a former space shuttle commander, said in a statement. The inert motor cases, which Northrop Grumman described as being "structurally representative" of the solid rocket boosters used during NASA's space shuttle program, were trucked in from the company's Promontory, Utah test facility after being prepared for their exhibit. The twin solid rocket motors, which Northrop Grumman pledged to donate for the California Science Center's exhibit of the space shuttle Endeavour in 2017, were delivered over the past couple of weeks to the Mojave Air and Space Port, where they are being temporarily held in outdoor storage. Two rocket boosters made from parts that launched on more than 80 space shuttle missions are now parked outside of Los Angeles, having moved a step closer to standing up the display of a retired NASA orbiter.
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