Space Shuttle Endeavour in launch configuration

Endeavour was the last orbiter built, ordered to replace Challenger, and it flew one hundred and twenty three million miles, carried out the first repair of the Hubble Space Telescope and the first assembly flight of the International Space Station. Look for the scorched grey tiles under the nose and wings, which took the heat of re-entry, and the white blankets on the upper surfaces. The boosters are real, made of segments that flew on earlier missions, and the tank is ET-94, the only remaining flight-qualified example. Nothing here is a replica, which is what makes this the only complete authentic shuttle system in the world.

The orbiter came to Los Angeles in September 2012 on the back of a Boeing 747 and then travelled twelve miles through city streets on a crawler, past cheering crowds, over three days. It lay in a temporary pavilion until the end of 2023 and was then raised upright in an operation called Go for Stack in January 2024, before the new building rose around it. The Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center opens on the thirteenth of November 2026, and timed reservations are needed to enter it. The photograph shows the stack during construction, before the walls closed in.

Did You Know? The last shuttle on the streets of Los Angeles needed four hundred trees cut down along its route, and the Science Center paid to plant more than a thousand in their place.