Potentially spacebound again (Image: US National Archives)

You won’t find that in the gift shop. NASA is raiding retired space shuttles housed in museums for spare parts that could come in handy on the International Space Station (ISS).

The last shuttle flight was in 2011, and the four remaining shuttles were sent to museums around the US. This week, NASA engineers are removing four water storage tanks from the space shuttle Endeavour, housed at the California Science Center in Los Angeles.

The tanks have a combined capacity of 300 litres, and were previously used to store water for the shuttle crew and also to refill water supplies on the ISS. In May NASA removed the tanks from the shuttle Atlantis, which is on display at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.


The shuttles were designed for many more missions than they actually flew, so the tanks are still in good working order and NASA hopes they could form part of a new water storage facility on the ISS. “Using the shuttle tanks could greatly reduce the overall cost to build the new system,” says NASA spokesman Daniel Huot.

But the tanks won’t be returning to space any time soon. “There is currently no timeline for when they would fly and the design details, certifications and deployment details for the project are still in development,” says Huot.