The 60,000-pound vessel powering the final era of the Space Shuttle

Space · Published 19 October 2026 Swipe more like this →

In short: A massive external fuel tank, battered by a hurricane and restored to flight, has reached the Kennedy Space Center. It is the final piece of the puzzle for the Space Shuttle Endeavour’s journey to the International Space Station, marking the closing chapter of a legendary era in orbital exploration.

Designated ET-122, the external fuel tank is a massive structure measuring approximately 154 feet long and 28 feet wide. When empty, it weighs nearly 60,000 pounds. Its primary role is to house the liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen required to power the shuttle's engines during liftoff and its initial ascent into space. Once the shuttle reaches orbit, the tank is jettisoned and falls back to Earth. The journey of ET-122 to the launchpad is a testament to NASA's logistical resilience. The tank sustained damage during Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and had to be restored to flight configuration at the Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans. It eventually completed a 900-mile, six-day sea journey on the transport barge Pegasus to arrive at the Kennedy Space Center on September 27, 2010.

This arrival signaled the final preparations for the STS-134 mission, scheduled for February 2011. While the shuttle's solid rocket boosters were designed to be collected and reused, the external tank is a single-use component. The mission itself was intended to be a high-stakes delivery, carrying an early $2 billion astrophysics experiment to study cosmic rays, alongside spare parts for the International Space Station. While STS-134 was slated as the final flight, the program's end remained a subject of legislative discussion, with potential extra missions for the shuttle Atlantis still being debated in Congress.

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