Space Shuttle Endeavour Stands Ready as $450M STEM Gateway Opens in LA

A $450 million, 200,000-square-foot expansion of the California Science Center opens November 13 in Los Angeles, anchored by a 200-foot Space Shuttle Endeavour stacked nose-up with its fuel tank and solid rocket boosters — the only authentic shuttle displayed in launch position anywhere.

The Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center has been more than three decades in the making. More than 200 aerospace artifacts and interactive exhibits fill three multilevel galleries covering the history and physics of flight, space exploration, and autonomous craft. But the Endeavour vertical display is the centerpiece of a mission that the center's leaders frame as a talent pipeline: Southern California sits at the epicenter of the space startup economy, and the state's $366 billion space technology sector is short on STEM workers.

"We want to be a feeder into all kinds of science, engineering, and STEM careers," CSC president and CEO Jeffrey Rudolph said. "Getting particularly young people, who may not have thought of themselves as belonging in science and engineering, interested and involved. Even if they don't want to go into science, we think it's good to have a basic understanding of it."

California Governor Gavin Newsom put a political frame on the project at a press preview. "There's a war on science going on in our country right now," Newsom said. "That has implications not just for air and space, but for healthcare, all kinds of decisions. We want to help change that. This is a physical manifestation of what California values."

What does the museum actually offer?

The center's mandate is lowering barriers to science. Beyond free admission, it runs a summer science camp, professional development for science educators, and high school internships that place students with local aerospace companies and institutions.

The new wing's pull was evident before opening day. In July, Astronauts for America used the shuttle as a backdrop to launch its American college tour encouraging students to vote. Kenneth Phillips, the physicist who curates aerospace science at CSC, designed the exhibits around a freshman course he teaches at the University of Southern California — and enlisted his students to prototype several interactives. Some 30 astronauts are expected at the opening, including Endeavour's final mission crew led by Mark Kelly, now a U.S. senator from Arizona.

The expansion — roughly the size of three and a half football fields — about doubles the museum's exhibit space. Aircraft and spacecraft hang from the ceiling and rise from the lower floors:

• Authentic Gemini 11 and SpaceX Dragon cargo capsules
• A 3D-printed, 60-foot Electron rocket from Rocket Lab
• A Joby electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft
• A drone display
• An International Space Station fly-through simulation
• A Korean Air Boeing 747-400 cockpit simulating a flight to Seoul

A collaboration with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Caltech covers planetary exploration and Earth observation through lunar and Martian probe replicas, snakelike exploration robots, and a station where visitors can program a Mars rover mission.

The 20-story Endeavour holds court in the shuttle gallery alongside its orange propellant container and two boosters. The base sits 25 feet below, reachable in part through a dark 45-foot tunnel slide with turns replicating the shuttle's reentry path — an idea borrowed from Kennedy Space Center's Atlantis exhibit. "We saw that and said, 'That's good, but we can make it bigger and better,'" Rudolph said. Several levels offer views into the cockpit, mid-deck, and a payload bay stocked with supplies; a glass platform above looks down on the entire stack.

"We wanted to show the whole system in launch position to explain the science and engineering behind it and give a better understanding of the enormous amount of energy it takes to get off the surface of Earth and into orbit," Rudolph said.

Retired NASA astronaut John "Danny" Olivas, who flew two shuttle missions and advised on the project, said views once reserved for NASA engineers, astronauts, and their families are now shareable with everyone: "The visual experience does a much better job of capturing the enormity of it."

How did a shuttle get to Los Angeles?

Displaying a shuttle vertically was part of CSC's 1993 master plan. The center won Endeavour from NASA in 2011, beating other museums in a competition; Atlantis, Enterprise, and Discovery all reside on the East Coast. The shuttles were designed, built, and often landed in California, which helped the local case.

"So, we got it," Rudolph said. "And then we're like, 'Now what?'"

The answer took years: fundraising, transportation logistics, fabricating missing shuttle parts, and designing the first building to hold a vertical shuttle outside a NASA or Air Force facility, all with guidance from NASA engineers. Funding came from the center's namesake, Los Angeles entrepreneur Samuel Oschin, who died in 2003; the state of California; state-backed bonds; and private donations still being raised.

In 2012, the shuttle flew across California atop a modified Boeing 747 and landed at LAX. Then it rolled 12 miles through city streets on a specialized steel platform along a route that had to be more than 78 feet wide with no overhangs below 60 feet, past 1.5 million onlookers. The fuel tank came by barge through the Panama Canal to Marina Del Rey. "Almost half a million people showed up — for a fuel tank," Rudolph said.

After more than a decade displayed horizontally in a CSC atrium, Endeavour went vertical in early 2024. A 450-foot crane hoisted the orbiter by sling, turned it upright, and lowered it — with an inch to spare on either side — onto a concrete seismic slab isolated on ball bearings so it can move with earthquakes. "We figured that the shuttle as a design can withstand the worst earthquake anyone's predicting for L.A.," said project director Dennis Jenkins, a former NASA shuttle contractor of three decades.

Next, the center hopes to collaborate with the nearby Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, the Natural History Museum of L.A. County, and the California African American Museum.

"The country really needs science and engineering more than ever now, but it's more than just STEM," Rudolph said. "Space inspires across the entire spectrum of human expression."