A Magic Moment – seeing Endeavour

His eyes welled up as we walked into the large hanger, the Samuel Oschin Pavilion, holding Endeavour, at the California Science Center. My breath paused. The children stopped moving, momentarily. We stood in the presence of a real space shuttle!

This shuttle had been into space on 25 successful missions. It blew my mind to see this feat of engineering and to think of all the people that have worked with this shuttle over the 19 years it was in operation.

In numbers…

1992: The year Endeavour lifted off on its first flight. The orbiter carried seven astronauts to space on the STS-49 mission to rescue and repair a broken communications satellite.

4,671: The number of orbits Endeavour made of Earth during all of its missions.

299: The total number of days Endeavour has spent in space.

12: The number of times Endeavour visited the International Space Station. The shuttle’s trips to the orbiting laboratory include the very first U.S. space station mission, the STS-88 flight in December 1998 that launched the first American space station module, Unity.

3.5: The number of years it took NASA to build Endeavour. Construction on the orbiter began in September 1987, and completed in April 1991.

1: The number of times Endeavour has visited the Hubble Telescope in orbit. The shuttle was used to launch the first Hubble servicing mission, STS-61 in December 1993, which famously corrected the observatory’s faulty optics.

~ Space Shuttle Endeavour By The Numbers, Clara Moskowitz, SPACE.com Senior Writer | June 01, 2011

AMAZING!

It was incredible and we all felt quite awe struck!

Space shuttle Endeavour’s final journey was a 12-mile ride from LAX, through Inglewood, to the California Science Center in Exposition Park. Here it is in timelapse.

As an aside, it was free to see too!

There were so many great hands on exhibitions and areas of learning at the California Science Center.

If ever stopping in LA I’d recommend a visit.

A wonderful family experience.

My favourite photo of the visit was actually not of the space shuttle, but this one (of my three daughters ‘reading’ the news). Our eight year old is in the centre (as the newsreader), our four year old is to the right (being interviewed for her scientific expertise) and our eldest, on the left, is ‘interference’ / aka ‘mad scientist! They were hilarious.