April 25, 2016

— Two weeks after departing its assembly facility in New Orleans, ET-94, NASA's last existing external tank built to launch the space shuttle, arrived at the Panama Canal on Monday (April 25), reaching the apogee of its journey to the California Science Center in Los Angeles.

The orange-brown tank's transit of the famous waterway was expected to take two days to move along the six locks separating the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

The fifth space shuttle external tank to cross the Panama Canal – and the first to do so on an open-air barge — ET-94 is scheduled to take another 17 to 20 days to arrive at Marina del Rey in California. The external tank will then embark May 20 on an overnight road trip to Exposition Park, where the science center is located.

ET-94 is being delivered to the California Science Center to go on display with the orbiter Endeavour in the Samuel Oschin Air & Space Center, opening in 2019.