Shuttle Enterprise Arrives at New Home, the Intrepid Museum

Credit: Stan Honda/AFP/GettyImages

In April, we captured a few snapshots as the space shuttle Enterprise flew around New York City strapped to the top of a 747. Since then, however, the prototype shuttle had been sitting underneath a tent at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport (I actually saw the Enterprise out the cabin window on a recent flight out of JFK, thanks to a helpful reminder from the captain.)

Now, the shuttle has finally reached its new home. On Wednesday a barge towed the Enterprise up the Hudson River. On Thursday, crews used a crane to hoist the spacecraft off the ship and onto the deck of the Intrepid, a WWII carrier that has be repurposed as the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum and docked on the Hudson River not from PopMech's home base. (In fact, you can see our home, the Hearst Tower?in the background. It's the dark skyscraper on the far right.)

Enterprise did not fly in space; it was the first of the shuttles and acted as a prototype, completing successful test landings in the 1970s in advance of the first shuttle flights to space in the 1980s. If you're in New York right now, you can get a good look at Enterprise for free.

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