KSC-2011-8302

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – Inside Orbiter Processing Facility-1 at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, a technician attaches a crane to a heat shield that will be installed, along with an eyelid, on one of shuttle Discovery’s three replica shuttle main engines. The heat shields are composed of two, semi-circle-shaped sections of thermal protection system tiles that surround the engines. The work is part of the Space Shuttle Program’s transition and retirement processing of shuttle Discovery. Discovery is being prepared for display at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Va. For more information, visit http://www.nasa.gov/shuttle. Photo credit: NASA/Dimitri Gerondidakis