HUNTSVILLE – There will be a liftoff today at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center
However, it’s not quite the same kind of liftoff people associate with the nation’s space program.
After a three-plus year absence, the Pathfinder shuttle orbiter will return to the top of the shuttle stack at the museum.
Weather permitting, crews will use two heavy-lift cranes to raise the orbiter on top of the external tank this mornng. The timing of the lift will be determined based on extensive weight checks and assessments as well as wind speeds, the Rocket Center said in a news release.
On Thursday, the shuttle wings are scheduled to be lifted and attached to the orbiter main body followed by the shuttle’s main engines lifted and placed on the main body Friday morning. The total assembled weight of Pathfinder is more than 143 tons.
Pathfinder returns to the shuttle stack after extensive repair and retrofitting to the orbiter main body as well as painting and repairs to the external tank and solid rocket boosters. This multi-year project began when crews removed Pathfinder in January 2021.
The first step was to strip the exterior of the orbiter of its plywood and fiberglass exterior down to the original steel framework.
Over the past several months, crews have placed a new exterior of more than 500 3-D printed panels on the main body and wings. The panels have been weather-coated with a special base primer and the primary color scheme of a flight orbiter has been added.
Created in 1977, Pathfinder was used by NASA as a test article to practice movement and handling of the future space shuttle fleet. In the early 1980s, a group of Japanese businessmen paid to modify the structure with plywood and fiberglass to fully resemble a flight orbiter and displayed it from 1983 to 1984 at an exposition in Tokyo.
After the expo, Pathfinder returned to Huntsville and was mounted on the shuttle stack at the Rocket Center in 1989.
The Rocket Center will live stream the lift on its website.
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