![]() A livestream for raising the external tank was scrapped because of technical difficulties, and officials are working to iron out those problems ahead of Monday's orbiter move. Officials hope to livestream the latest lift. On the second night, the tank was able to be lowered further, in between the solid rocket boosters. The first was delayed by winds, although crews were able to begin the lift before stopping work mid-morning. By contrast, the external tank lift took two nights. The main lift of the orbiter is likely to take one night. During the arrival of the external tank, there were times when the crew "had to scurry up and remove some scaffolding pieces and reconfigure it while we were doing the lowering," Rudolph said. In Los Angeles, crews have had to painstakingly build up, take down and reformat scaffolding to enable them to make the proper connections. Read more: Mission accomplished: Space shuttle Endeavour's giant orange fuel tank moved into viewing spot in L.A.īeginning Monday night, the space shuttle Endeavour will be lifted by a 450-foot crane and placed next to its fuel tanks. When the shuttle was stacked with its external tank and solid rocket boosters at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the assembly was done inside NASA’s Vehicle Assembly Building - one of the largest by volume in the world, rising more than 50 stories and equipped with plenty of cranes and platforms from which to work. "This has never been done like this before, with cranes and outside and at a construction site," he said. "Wind and wings don't go well on a crane," Rudolph said. "And then the challenge is actually bringing the orbiter - 'capturing it' - at the three attach points."īecause Endeavour is essentially a glider with a massive wingspan, it'll be difficult to guide it down if there are strong winds. "There are a few places where there's some challenging parts in the lowering of it because of the tight fit with the wings and vertical stabilizer," he said. With the Endeavour orbiter - the last space shuttle ever built - crews will need to maneuver an object with a 78-foot wingspan and get "everything absolutely level and aligned properly, and extremely gently," Rudolph said. The tank is so large that, as it was lowered, there was less than an inch of space between it and the solid rocket boosters. There are different challenges lifting the shuttle than the external tank, which was completed earlier this month. Nothing should change after that until the museum opens the payload bay doors in a few years when Endeavour is ready for public display, Rudolph said. Read more: Space shuttle Endeavour makes one more voyage to its final destination at a new space center The schedule could change because of weather, as strong winds would force a postponement of the move. And the sling will come off, and we'll say, 'Done,' " he said. It's believed that by Thursday, everything will be "hard mated, meaning everything will be torqued, bolted as it will be forever. Once that is done, everything will still need to be tightened, Rudolph said, but the move will effectively be complete. And several of the pieces inside the orbiter that it attaches to are very fragile, so they will do this very slowly." "It puts all the attached hardware in the right place on the orbiter. "It is extremely sensitive to get it in exactly the right position," Rudolph said. The second part will be to "capture" Endeavour to the external tank. "That's the part of lifting it into the building and getting it close to the orbiter," said Jeffrey Rudolph, president of the California Science Center. ![]() The first - the so-called "soft mate" - is scheduled to begin around 10 p.m. streets en route to the California Science Center. A 2012 file photo shows the space shuttle Endeavor on L.A. ![]()
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