Space Shuttle Enterprise Cruises New York Waterfront

The space shuttle test vehicle Enterprise made its way around New York City by barge Sunday, June 3, en route to the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum.

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The space shuttle test vehicle Enterprise made its way around New York City by barge Sunday, June 3, en route to the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum. Enterprise, which completed a series of test flights in the 1970s but never went to space, had been carried from its previous home near Washington, D.C., to John F. Kennedy airport in April on a modified NASA 747.*

Photographer Ken Kremer took the picture above from Bayonne, N.J., showing Enterprise backed by the Manhattan skyline, including the towering One World Trade Center now under construction. The top of the Statue of Liberty is visible just behind the shuttle, in the center of the photograph.

After cruising Coney Island and other stretches of the New York waterfront, Enterprise headed over to dock in New Jersey. On Wednesday, weather-permitting, the shuttle will head up the Hudson River to the Intrepid, the museum and retired aircraft carrier where Enterprise will soon go on display. (The trip had been planned for Tuesday but was postponed due to poor weather.) But the first leg of the journey was not an uneventful one. CollectSpace.com reports that the shuttle grazed part of a railroad bridge and damaged one of its wingtips.

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*Correction: This sentence originally stated incorrectly that Enterprise flew to New York City from Cape Canaveral in Florida.

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