Shuttle Enterprise Flies Over NYC

Credit: NASA

The first space shuttle just became the first space shuttle to be in New York City. Mated on top of NASA?s modified Boeing 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft (SCA), the 75-ton Enterprise prototype space shuttle came north from Washington, D.C., this morning. It flew up and down the Hudson River this morning, not far from PopMech?s office in the Hearst Tower. After a series of flyovers above the Statue of Liberty, Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum, the George Washington Bridge, and other NYC locales, the 747 landed at JFK airport where it was greeted with a star-packed ceremony that included NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver, New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, and others.

Spectators lined the Hudson to get a look at the Enterprise and snap some photos as it took to the skies one last time. The flight was delayed five days due to bad weather, but otherwise went as planned. Enterprise began its grand tour of New York at about 10:30. At 11:26 Eastern NASA tweeted the 747?s touchdown at JFK, where the shuttle will stay for the next month-plus.

In June, crews will take the Enterprise off the 747 by crane and put the prototype shuttle onto a barge for transportation to its new home at the Intrepid museum, which is docked on the Hudson. A tugboat will pull the barge through Jamaica Bay, under the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, through New York Harbor, and up the Hudson to Pier 86. A crane with a 190-foot boom will hoist Enterprise onto the Intrepid?s flight deck, where it will be stationed under a temporary climate-controlled pavilion. The exhibit will be open to the public in July as the Intrepid continues to work on a permanent display facility for the Enterprise.

Enterprise, named so after an epic write-in campaign by Star Trek fans, was a space shuttle prototype built in 1976 for ground and flight tests on the 747. It never went into orbit. Once the full shuttle program launched, NASA retired the Enterprise and gave it to the Smithsonian Institute in 1985. The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum?s Udvar-Hazy Center was designed to showcase the Enterprise, and the shuttle had been parked there since the center opened at Dulles airport in 2003.

Last year, when the 30-year-long space shuttle program ended, NASA had to choose which museums would get to keep which shuttle, if any. The decision process was controversial, but ultimately, the Intrepid museum was awarded the Enterprise and the Smithsonian gave up the prototype in exchange for space shuttle Discovery, which actually flew into space from 1984 to 2011. Discovery was flown on the same 747 SCA from its temporary home in Florida to Virginia earlier this month. After unloading Discovery from the back of the SCA, two giant cranes loaded the Enterprise in its place.

To prepare for the shuttle?s arrival, the Intrepid had to make space and removed three Korean War-era jets from its flight deck. A Supermarine Scimitar F.1 British Royal Navy fighter bomber, a Douglas F3D-2 (F-10) Skyknight, and a Mikoyan Gurevich MIG-15 aircraft moved to the Empire State Aerosciences Museum in Glenville, N.Y.

The Intrepid museum also had to reinforce the carrier?s deck to support the shuttle?s weight, and built a 56-foot-tall all-weather tent to temporarily protect it from the elements. (The museum paid for the shuttle?s transportation costs?$9.6 million?up front.)

Space shuttle Atlantis, the last one to make it into space, is moving down the road from its current location in Florida to NASA?s Kennedy Space Center?s visitor center. The SCA is not needed for that move, but will move the final space shuttle, Endeavour, which will go from Kennedy Space Center to the California Science Center in Los Angeles later this year. The plane and shuttle are expected to be viewable across the country.

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