---
title: "Space Shuttle Endeavour stands in launch position as Los Angeles’ Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center opens"
url: https://badiyaa.com/endeavour-samuel-oschin-air-space-center/
published: 2026-11-15T02:00:00+00:00
modified: 2026-11-15T02:00:00+00:00
section: Science
publisher: Badiyaa
---

# Space Shuttle Endeavour stands in launch position as Los Angeles’ Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center opens

Space Shuttle Endeavour stands upright in its 185-foot launch stack at the California Science Center's new Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center.

Space Shuttle Endeavour now points straight at the sky in Los Angeles, bolted to two real solid rocket boosters and the last flight-qualified external tank in existence, inside a gallery that rises nearly 200 feet. The California Science Center set November 13, 2026, as the opening day of its Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center, which it describes as “the only place in the world to see a complete, authentic space shuttle system.”

The stack stands 185 feet tall, about 20 stories. Admission to the Science Center, including the new wing, is free, though the center said timed reservations, booked ahead for a small service fee, would be needed because of expected demand.

## What visitors can do

The center’s announcement lists three headline experiences inside the Samuel Oschin Shuttle Gallery:

- A gantry-style elevator that climbs 140 feet up the side of the stack, meant to echo an astronaut’s ride to the hatch.

- The Shuttle Descent Slide, a 115-foot tube that drops riders 45 feet while orange light mimics re-entry plasma and a double boom plays, the sound of a returning shuttle’s nose and tail breaking the sound barrier.

- A replica flight deck with joysticks, switches, pedals and buttons like those the commander and pilot used.

Exhibits in the gallery cover all 135 shuttle missions and the heat-shield tiles, along with tributes to the crews and rescue personnel lost during the program. Two more galleries, the Korean Air Aviation Gallery and the Kent Kresa Space Gallery, hold about 100 artifacts, among them a Harrier T.4 jet, a Rocket Lab Electron launcher and a Space Shuttle Main Engine.

## By the numbers

The elevator’s 140-foot climb covers about three quarters of the 185-foot stack. The 200,000-square-foot expansion nearly doubles the Science Center’s exhibit space. And the fundraising was close to finished by June: nearly $410 million of a $450 million budget, or about 91 percent, from more than 1,100 donors.

“It is the fulfillment of a decades long dream and will stand as an enduring source of inspiration for generations of scientists, engineers and explorers,” said Jeffrey Rudolph, the center’s president and CEO, when the date was announced in June.

## How Endeavour got here

[Endeavour](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Endeavour), orbiter OV-105, was built to replace Challenger and rolled out of Plant 42 in Palmdale, California, in April 1991. It flew 25 missions from 1992 to 2011, including the first Hubble repair in 1993, and logged about 197.8 million kilometers. The name follows the British spelling because it honors HMS Endeavour, Captain James Cook’s ship.

In 2012 it was flown to Los Angeles atop a modified jumbo jet and then crept 12 miles through city streets to the museum, where it sat horizontally in a temporary pavilion from October 30, 2012, until the end of 2023. Stacking began in July 2023 on a slab resting on six base isolators to protect it from earthquakes, and the orbiter itself was hoisted into place on January 30, 2024. The building was then raised around it, with work running into April 2026.

Palmdale has its own odd footnote in Hollywood history, which we covered in our story on [The Terminal’s airport set inside a Palmdale bomber hangar](https://badiyaa.com/the-terminal-tom-hanks-hangar-set/). For more spaceflight history, read how [Apollo 13’s weightless scenes were filmed in 612 dives aboard NASA’s KC-135](https://badiyaa.com/apollo-13-vomit-comet-zero-gravity-filming/).

The Science Center sits in Exposition Park at 700 Exposition Park Drive and is open daily from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

## Further reading

- [Wikipedia: Space Shuttle Endeavour](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Endeavour)

*Image: Steven Lek, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons*

*This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by our Editorial Desk. [How we work](https://badiyaa.com/editorial-policy/).*