Space Shuttle Enterprise’s New York Arrival Delayed Again

The Space Shuttle Enterprise’s flight from Washington D.C. to New York has been delayed again. The shuttle was originally supposed to make an appearance over the skies of New York City on Monday, however bad weather in the area has grounded the spacecraft.

Although the Enterprise was never actually flown in space, it was used by NASA in the 1970’s to do approach and landing tests.

It has been grounded as a museum display for the last 25 years, but was displaced from it’s most recent home at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center when Discovery, the last shuttle to go into space, arrived.

NASA released a statement on Tuesday morning, which read:

“A large region of low pressure dominating the east coast has made it difficult to reliably predict an acceptable day for the flight.”

When the flight was originally delayed on Monday, NASA specialists met, and tentatively agreed that Wednesday would be the best weather day to move the space shuttle Enterprise.

At their meeting on Tuesday morning, they announced the delay, hoping that by Friday April 27th, the weather will be clear enough to allow the flight to take place.

The list time that Enterprise took flight was on November 18, 1985, when it flew to Dulles Airport from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Since the spacecraft does not actually have mounted engines, it was mounted on top of another aircraft, a NASA 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft (SCA).

This type of aircraft is the same used when the NASA test shuttle originally began its service. The NASA statement went on to say that, “Managers now are tentatively targeting the flight for Friday, April 27, weather permitting.”

In an earlier press release, which announced the flight of Enterprise, NASA hinted to Ner Yorkers to look out their windows during the space shuttle flight. The release states:

“If all goes as planned, the aircraft is expected to fly near a variety of landmarks in the metropolitan area, including the Statue of Liberty and the Intrepid Sea, Air Space Museum.”

Once it arrives at JFK International Airport, the space shuttle Enterprise will remain in storage until June, when it will be loaded on a barge, sailed, then lowered onto the deck of the Intrepid for display.

Check out the video below, where the space shuttle Enterprise arrives at Dulles International Airport:

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