Fine artist Natalie Rosen sculpted custom foam textures to restore the launch-damaged external tank of the space shuttle Endeavour for its new towering display at the California Science Center, which opens to the public on Friday.
Sculpting the Shuttle Stack
Natalie Rosen had no background working on aircraft or spacecraft before joining the project. She holds a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in fine arts from Cal State Long Beach and was brought onto the museum staff because project leaders were looking for a sculptor, collectSPACE reported.
Before her hiring, the California Science Center had acquired ET-94, the only flight-worthy external tank to remain at the end of the program. NASA donated the 154-foot-tall structure after it spent years serving as a test article where engineers stripped off its original insulating foam.
“So much of the foam on the ET had been dissected and removed during its time as a test article that they were trying to figure out how to put it back on and blend it in to the original foam in a convincing way,” Rosen told collectSPACE.
Matching the Orange Peel Texture
The space shuttle external tank relied on insulating foam to protect the orbiter from extreme cold and prevent cryogenic propellants from boiling off during ascent. Replicating the characteristic texture of that spray-applied material presented an unexpected artistic challenge.
Dennis Jenkins, who had worked as a space shuttle engineer, had high praise for Rosen and her work. He blended a special paint called “ET Orange” to cover the bumpy acreage foam, while choosing a mocha shade for the intertank. Custom-mixed “ice cream” colors were used for newer closeout hardware and feed lines.
“If you look at the tank very closely, there’s this bumpy texture, and there is a pattern from the original manufacturing and how it was sprayed on,” Rosen said. “There’s this overlapping line, a subtle-like stripe to it.”
“She had to come up with a lot of new processes because we couldn’t apply foam the same way they did at Michoud. It’s not flightworthy by any means, but just coming up with how to make it look real took a lot of imagination on her part and she was pretty much a one-woman show for most of it,” said Jenkins.
Initial attempts to take impressions and cast molds from real foam failed. Rosen then proposed applying a dense urethane and hand-sculpting the surface to match the surrounding acreage texture.
Rosen Worked on Scaffolding and Ladders to Reach the Tank
Once workers lifted the external tank vertically by crane to mate it with the solid rocket boosters and the orbiter, Rosen’s workspace shifted upward. She spent months working on scaffolding and extension ladders to reach every section of the massive stack.
“It’s definitely the largest art project I’ve ever worked on, and I mean I touched every inch of it,” Rosen said. “Once it went vertical, I was going up and down stairs. Probably the scariest was the point in the scaffolding where it just became ladders. So I had to be very, very careful and calculated in what I was doing.”
Even after crews removed the main scaffolding ahead of the museum opening, Rosen used a scissor lift just weeks prior to install a final component on the aft dome of the liquid hydrogen tank.
Opening at the Samuel Oschin Center
The newly completed display stands inside the Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center, an expansion of the California Science Center in Los Angeles. Rosen plans to continue working at the museum, having already assisted with the assembly, disassembly, and repair of other aircraft, satellites, and probe collections.
The Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center opens to the general public at 11:15 a.m. PST on Friday, November 13, 2026, following a private ribbon-cutting ceremony. General admission is free, though visitors must secure timed entry tickets online or by calling 213-744-2019 due to anticipated high demand.
