Enterprise

The Space Shuttle prototype Enterprise flies free after being released from NASA's 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft (SCA) over Rogers Dry Lakebed during the second of five free flights carried out at the Dryden Flight Research Center, Edwards, California, as part of the Shuttle program's Approach and Landing Tests (ALT).

On September 17, 1976, the first space shuttle orbiter, Enterprise, was rolled out. Enterprise was crucial to the Space Shuttle Program. Its series of approach and landing tests in 1977 proved the shuttle could fly in the atmosphere and land like a glider. After those tests, Enterprise was flown mounted atop the Boeing 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft to NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., where it was mated with an ET and SRBs and subjected to a series of vertical ground vibration tests.Enterprise was also sent to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where it was rolled out to the launch pad to act as a "stand-in" as NASA prepared for the first shuttle launch.

A modern engineering marvel, Enterprise was displayed at the Paris, France, Air Show, as well as to Germany, Italy, England and Canada, in 1983.

During April-Oct. 1984, Enterprise was ferried to Vandenberg Air Force Base in California and to Mobile, Ala. From there it was taken by barge to New Orleans, La., for display at the United States 1984 World's Fair.
On Nov. 18, 1985, Enterprise was ferried from the Kennedy Space Center to Dulles Airport, Washington, D.C., and became the property of the Smithsonian Institution. Enterprise is now the centerpiece of the McDonnell Space Hangar at the National Air and Space Museum's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Va.