Los Angeles, CA — Two years after it paraded through the streets of Los Angeles following a cross-country ferry flight from Florida, the space shuttle Endeavour was loaded with a Spacehab logistics module Thursday ahead of the orbiter’s planned transition to a vertical display on a mock launch pad in 2018.
The Spacehab pressurized module, known as Flight Unit No. 3, flew on eight space shuttle missions from 1996 to 2000, helping deliver supplies to the Russian space station Mir and the International Space Station.
The installation of the Spacehab module and other items into the shuttle’s cargo pay has been dubbed “Go for Payload” by the California Science Center, which hosts Endeavour and plans to expand the shuttle display in the coming years.
Using special equipment to prevent damage to sensitive components, workers opened up Endeavour’s clamshell-like payload bay doors. The lightweight composite doors opened under their own power in orbit, but they require support to overcome gravity on Earth.
Suspended from a crane, the Spacehab module was lowered into Endeavour’s 60-foot-long, 15-foot-wide payload bay Thursday.
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