Engineering film footage of the final shuttle launch

The tugboat and barge transporting the last space shuttle external tank to its display venue in California have reached the inlet to the Panama Canal, now just days away from sailing into the Pacific.

Former Johnson Space Center Director Christopher Columbus Kraft Jr., the man who created the iconic role of NASA flight director during the Mercury and Gemini programs and whose no-nonsense, uncompromising management style defined control room operations and discipline through the Apollo years and beyond, died Monday. He was 95.

A spectacle never seen before — a space shuttle external fuel tank traversing city streets — was witnessed in Los Angeles on Saturday as the relic was moved to the museum that will construct a rocket science attraction.