Space Shuttle Flies to New York City

Enterprise, the prototype for the space shuttles, flew over the New York City area, riding atop a specially equipped 747 jet, before landing at Kennedy International Airport at 11:22 a.m. And, perhaps in a scenario familiar to many air travel passengers arriving in New York, the shuttle took its time meandering over the area before landing.

Crowds of people lined various vantage points across the area to get a glimpse of the shuttle, which flew up from Dulles Airport near Washington on Friday morning.

The 150,000-pound shuttle soared over New York Harbor, past the Statue of Liberty and up the Hudson River. After passing over the George Washington Bridge, the flight continued north to the Tappan Zee Bridge before making another pass over the city. And then it made the same loop, heading back up the Hudson again.

Hundreds of people gathered in Battery Park on Friday morning to watch for the space shuttle. There were those who had gone there from across the city, there were tourists from abroad and there were local office workers who had temporarily abandoned their desks for a glimpse of a craft that had hurtled through the heavens.

The crowd waited expectantly, facing south, training binoculars and cameras at the horizon. Then the shuttle came into view, piercing the clouds above Governor’s Island. “That’s it,” yelled someone. “Over there,” another voice shouted, “doing a low fly-by.”

The plane passed overhead, soaring above the Statue of Liberty, a tugboat and a circle line vessel, affording those on the ground a clear view of the shuttle, perched atop the jet’s fuselage. “Ladies and gentlemen, it’s the shuttle Enterprise,” announced one spectator, Peter Vasiljev, from Brooklyn.

A variety of languages, including French and Italian were heard among the spectators who gathered atop the High Line park on the West Side of Manhattan to watch the space shuttle. The many languages were quickly replaced with “oohs” and “aahs” at the first sighting of the shuttle.

“I expected to hear a sonic boom,” said Julian Wu, a 67-year-old Chelsea resident and self-proclaimed “space nut,” after the vessel was out of view.

Torrey Taralli, 33, who works in digital marketing, packed his camera and began to make his way off the High Line to 18th Street below. “I gotta go. Gotta get back to work.”

The flight is supposed to be the last time in the sky for Enterprise, which never flew in space but did glide to the ground on its own several times a few decades ago. The prototype is eventually destined for the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum, which is paying the National Aeronautics & Space Administration more than $9 million for the delivery. NASA awarded Enterprise to the museum last year when it was giving away all of the remaining orbiters after ending the shuttle program.

Last week, the same old 747 ferried the shuttle Discovery to Dulles so that it could replace Enterprise at the nearby satellite site of the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum. Once Enterprise is lifted off the 747 by cranes — a process NASA calls “demating” — it will be loaded onto a barge this summer and floated from Kennedy to the Intrepid, a retired aircraft carrier docked in the Hudson in Midtown Manhattan.

In short, an antique airplane is carrying an antique spacecraft to New York, where it will wind up on the deck of an antique warship.