![]() ![]() (Related: "Endeavour Makes Final Landing in California.") "Pictures like this give you insight into just how complex it is to operate a vehicle that travels in space and pull off a manned space program." That one still had old-fashioned style instrumentation," said Horowitz, who served as both a commander and a pilot aboard Discovery. "It's awesome, although it doesn't look like the flight deck I flew on Discovery. Then engineers would apply the improvements to older shuttles.įormer NASA astronaut Scott "Doc" Horowitz noted the differences in the flight deck of the space shuttle Discovery when it was retired to a National Air and Space Museum facility outside Washington, D.C., earlier this year. The flight decks of each of the shuttles have changed throughout the years as a result of periodic upgrades-a complicated process that involved a flight back to California, where all of the orbiters were born, and a temporary break from duty.Įach new space shuttle boasted innovations to reduce weight improve safety, and so forth, Brack explained. (See National Geographic's picks of the most unforgettable space shuttle pictures.) "Sitting in a museum, you can't have Freon or water." "The crew module is water cooled, but the rest of the shuttle uses Freon," a toxic refrigerant gas, Brack said. ![]() It's not like a car, where you just turn a key."Īnother reason: Shuttle flight decks get very hot with all of the equipment turned on, and special cooling systems are needed to carry away the heat. "So it's a coordinated effort between mission control and somebody in the shuttle to power them up. "The power switch of the shuttle isn't in the shuttle. Part of the reason for this, Brack explained, is that powering on the flight deck is a complicated process. The flight decks of all of the orbiters will be permanently turned off while on public display. "Endeavour was exactly how she would've been after coming freshly back from space."īrack's photograph of an illuminated Endeavour is among the last to show a powered-on shuttle flight deck. "At periodic times during the decommissioning, they had to turn them on to do things, and we made sure we were there on one of the days when they had to turn Endeavour on," Brack said. Of the three shuttles freelance photojournalist Jon Brack photographed, Endeavour was the only one to be shot with its flight deck powered on. The 3.65-gigapixel Endeavour picture above, for instance, is made of up more than 600 individual photographs digitally stitched together. (The Society owns National Geographic News.) To provide an unprecedented look at Endeavour and the other retired space shuttles, both inside and out, photographers for National Geographic recently captured more than two dozen ultrahigh-resolution, 360-degree pictures of each orbiter. ![]() (See more zoomable panoramas of space shuttles.) "Never before has an item of this size traversed our city streets," Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said in a statement. The shuttle's road trip from a hangar at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), where it's been housed since a cross-country flight last month, to the California Science Center (CSC) is only 12 miles (19 kilometers) long but has required months of planning.Ĭity workers have had to reinforce city streets with steel plates to withstand Endeavour's 170,000 pounds (77,110 kilograms) and remove more than 400 trees, 200 streetlights, and nearly 60 traffic signals to make way for the five-story-tall orbiter. At least one image (above) shows Endeavour as it will never be seen again-powered up, as if in flight. As the space shuttle Endeavour inches down Los Angeles streets Friday and Saturday, new zoomable, ultrahigh-resolution pictures offer a last spin around the NASA craft's flight deck, button by button.
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