WASHINGTON: NASA Administrator Charles Bolden will attend the Thursday opening of the Space Shuttle Pavilion at New York's Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum.

Bolden, who on April 12, 2011, announced Intrepid would receive space shuttle Enterprise, will join museum officials and three of the four original Enterprise pilots at an 11 a.m. EDT ceremony on Intrepid’s Flight Deck, located at Pier 86 (46th Street and 12th Avenue) in Manhattan.

Immediately following the ceremony, officials will participate in a ribbon cutting in front of the pavilion, officially marking the opening of Enterprise to the public. Bolden and Intrepid officials will be available for media interviews after the ribbon cutting, and the pavilion will be open to media from noon until 5 p.m.

Enterprise was NASA's first space shuttle, a prototype that conducted critical tests in Earth's atmosphere in 1977. These pioneering tests paved the way for the successful orbital flights of later shuttles, beginning with the first flight of the space shuttle Columbia in 1981.

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