The space agency's original prototype orbiter, Enterprise is scheduled to arrive at the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum on the west side of Manhattan on Tuesday.

By Robert Z. Pearlman,SPACE.com / June 4, 2012

NASA's space shuttle Enterprise launched on a voyage Sunday (June 3), going where no space shuttle has gone before: New Jersey.

The space agency's original prototype orbiter, Enterprise is scheduled to arrive at the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum on the west side of Manhattan on Tuesday (June 5). Leaving Sunday from New York's John F. Kennedy (JFK) International Airport where it was delivered atop a jumbo jet in late April, theshuttle was barged to Bayonne, N.J., as a layover on its way up the Hudson River.

Enterprise, having firstarrived in the Big Apple by airand setting sail Sunday by sea, is only missing the experience of traveling through space to complete the Intrepid's three modal themes. The first of NASA's space shuttles, Enterprise did not fly in orbit but instead was used for a series of approach and landing tests in the late 1970s. [Gallery: Enterprise Sails to New Jersey]

Enterprise embarks

On Saturday, a large crane was used to load the 57,000 pound (26,000 kilogram) prototype shuttle onto the open air flat bed barge, which, towed by tugboat, made the trip to the Garden State the next day. Spectators in Queens, Staten Island and Brooklyn, including at Coney Island, lined the shores to watch as Enterprise floated by.

Along the way, thespace shuttle Enterprisepassed under several crossings, its vertical stabilizer, or tail, clearing the Verrazano Bridge, for example, by a good margin. At others, including the Gil Hodges Memorial, the bridges needed to be raised to allow the shuttle to pass.

The shuttle will stay in Bayonne through Tuesday. On Monday, it'll be hoisted off its barge onto one equipped with a crane.

Enterprise arrives

Original post:

NASA space shuttle embarks on voyage to New Jersey