LOS ANGELES (AP) – NASA is sending its last space shuttle external propellant tank to Los Angeles to join the retired orbiter Endeavour on display at the California Science Center. The plan is to mount the winged spaceship vertically on the massive tank as if ready for launch, complete with a real pair of solid rocket boosters.
The tank is set to arrive in Los Angeles on Wednesday, after a trip that took it from a space agency facility in Louisiana, through the Gulf of Mexico and the Panama Canal, and up the Pacific Coast of Mexico.
External tanks have long played a critical role in the heady ere of space exploration.
EXTERNAL TANK-94
Known as ET-94, the tank is massive: 154 feet long, 27.5 feet in diameter and weighs 65,000 pounds empty. Tanks not only carried propellant but served as the core of the launch system’s architecture. A shuttle – also referred to as an orbiter – would be mounted on the side of a tank, along with two solid-fuel rocket motors.