Novak also happens to have been the lead of the shuttle loads group at Boeing (and Rockwell before that). He is one of the docents helping to answer guests' questions as they tour around the exhibit. If you've been to the California Science Center to see Endeavour since it opened on display, you may have met Bill Novak. The same type of isolators are part of the way that Endeavour will be kept safe in the vertical configuration, though the preparations and complexities involved are greater. "We went through and looked at the surveillance cameras, and there was no movement - or at least, none that we could perceive." "The only one that I remember was the largest one," said Jenkins. And one, a 7.1 magnitude earthquake in 2019, was felt by as many as 30 million people spanning the length of the state. Five of those events were violent enough to cause minor damage. Since that day, Caltech's Southern California Earthquake Data Center has recorded 7,383 times the the ground shook strongly enough that people in the area might feel it. In the case of a powerful earthquake, the shuttle would only glide gently back and forth, having been separated from the ground. When Endeavour was rolled into its pavilion at the end of a three-day road trip in October 2012, it was mounted atop four friction-pendulum seismic isolators. is a pile of rubble," Dennis Jenkins, director of the science center's project to display Endeavour and a former NASA space shuttle engineer, said in an interview with .Ī lot of research and technology stands behind Jenkins' answer, providing the confidence for he and his team to go forward with stacking the towering display. "Suffice it to say that the building and Endeavour will be standing when L.A. Now, as the California Science Center takes the first steps to stack the vehicle with a pair of twin solid rocket boosters and an external fuel tank for a vertical, launchpad-like permanent exhibit inside the new Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center, the question has only increased in magnitude. Even before it opened more than a decade ago, the exhibit of NASA's retired space shuttle Endeavour in Los Angeles has elicited one question perhaps more than any other: Can it survive an earthquake?Īnd to think, that was while the winged orbiter was displayed near the ground in its horizontal, landing configuration. Follow for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter and on Facebook. You can follow Staff Writer Denise Chow on Twitter. Over the weekend, engineers at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., also assessed minor damage to the foam of Endeavour's external fuel tank that was sustained during severe storms in the area last week.Įvaluations indicated that there was no significant damage to the spacecraft, NASA officials said. Four spacewalks are planned for the mission. The shuttle will deliver supplies and a $2 billion science experiment, called the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, during the 14-day spaceflight. Johnson, and mission specialists Michael Fincke, Greg Chamitoff, Andrew Feustel and Italian astronaut Roberto Vittori to the International Space Station. An official launch date will be selected at the conclusion of the meeting, NASA officials said.Įndeavour was initially slated to blast off on April 19, carrying commander Mark Kelly, pilot Gregory H. NASA managers will hold a Flight Readiness Review meeting on April 19 to assess the space shuttle's readiness to launch. The main objective of the remaining shuttle flights is to ferry supplies to the station so that the orbiting laboratory is in a good position for the years ahead, following the retirement of the agency's shuttle fleet later this year. "We even looked at the possibility of putting that experiment on Endeavour, but logistically that didn't work out as well."īalancing traffic at the space station and on the ground has proved challenging for the various space station partners, but is especially crucial for NASA, in order to capitalize on the unrivaled cargo-carrying capabilities of the space shuttles. ![]() "Apparently there is a biological experiment onboard the Progress that has a very short shelf life onboard that spacecraft," Beutel said.
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