It made 25 space missions, a one-way travel to Los Angeles atop a 747, and a procession through the streets of the city. As part of its extensive journey, Space Shuttle Endeavour will now take a ride on a crane the size of a skyscraper.

The 178,000-pound shrink-wrapped orbiter was elevated and lowered into the future Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center on Monday night by a crane operated by the California Science Center. With Endeavour’s successful lift, the museum’s six-month-long “Go for Stack” process has reached its most significant milestone. The space shuttle is now positioned vertically, ready to launch, in front of an orange fuel tank and two rocket boosters—the only space shuttle in the world with that distinction.

Angelenos may easily catch a look of the retired NASA shuttle right now—at least the top portion of it. It will be a few years before you can enter the museum and view it up close again.Right now, you can see the orbiter’s nose half as well as a large portion of its fuel tank and rockets from almost anyplace in Exposition Park. Though you can get a closer-up but more obscured view near the rose garden to the north, the plaza or green spot between the Coliseum and BMO Stadium offers the best view of the shuttle. You should see it as soon as possible, though, as work will ultimately obstruct some views of the stack until it is completely hidden and has a roof over its head.

The conical bases of the rocket boosters, known as the aft skirts, were lifted into the building site by crane as part of the museum’s “Go for Stack” procedure, which got underway last July. The forward assemblies atop the 116-foot-tall solid rocket motors went through the same procedure in November. They were joined earlier this month by ET-94, the enormous orange external fuel tank that was visible just outside the former Endeavour exhibition space.

The space shuttle itself was the final piece in the puzzle; it had been on exhibit until the end of 2023 in a makeshift structure across the museum. The conveyance that the horizontal craft boarded got it closer to the construction site. Over the course of about 30 minutes on Monday night at 9:30 p.m., two cranes raised it into an upright position while a small group of people gathered on State Drive to watch.

welcomed to view the remaining lift from the Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center, which is still under construction. Soon after midnight, the space shuttle started its vertical lift, following over two hours of work to remove a smaller crane that was attached to the back of the spacecraft and then adjust the angle to perfection. It took about an hour for a 450-foot crane to gently and methodically raise Endeavour up and over onto the building site, close to the fuel tank, and even farther down. After that, a number of tiny maneuvers and modifications were made until the shuttle and the stack were in a “soft mate” early in the morning. The next evening, work on securing the flight hardware bolts and nuts was completed.

Now that the major shuttle relocation has been completed, construction on the Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center will proceed around it. Space Shuttle Endeavour was placed on public display within a makeshift tent on the west side of the California Science Center 10 years ago, after traveling 123 million miles around the planet. The tent allowed people to wander around and underneath the shuttle. However, guests will be able to observe the decommissioned NASA spacecraft from a variety of vantage points at different heights thanks to this free extension, which includes a glass platform atop the nose. Although the museum did not yet have an opening date, when the building’s groundbreaking was place in 2022, it had projected that development would take three years.