As this cache is placed, the Space Shuttle (officially known as the Space Transportation System) is coming to the end of its operational life. The final Shuttle flight is currently scheduled to take place in 2010. After that, the existing Shuttle fleet will be retired and never fly again. Be sure to watch these final flights, you'll likely never see a space vehicle quite like this one again.
Conceived of in the 1960’s and built primarily with technology available in the 1970’s, the Space Shuttle rides into orbit on the back of the fuel tank that provides liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen to its three main engines. During the first two minutes of ascent, two solid rocket boosters strapped to the side of the external tank provide the additional thrust needed to lift the 4.5 million pound vehicle off the pad. These components along with the numerous other systems that allow the Shuttle to function in space and then re-enter and land are comprised of millions of pieces of hardware and millions of lines of software. That they can all be made to function simultaneously and in harmony is a fantastic engineering accomplishment. The Shuttle may not have lived up to some of its original goals of routine, inexpensive access to space, but it has served a key role in American space exploration and has been a source of national pride for almost three decades.
The cache is not at the posted coordinates. There you will find the Space Shuttle Enterprise at the Udvar-Hazy Center of the Air and Space Museum. Enterprise never flew in space but was used for approach and landing tests during the 1970’s. NASA had originally planned to retrofit Enterprise for orbital flight, but significant design changes during construction of Columbia made a retrofit impractical. In addition to Columbia, four more Shuttles were eventually built and flew in space - Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour.
Update: At 5:57 a.m. EDT on July 22, 2011, Atlantis’ wheels came to a stop on Runway 15 at the Kennedy Space Center and the Space Shuttle program ended. Over 30 years of flight on 135 missions, shuttles traveled 542,398,878 miles, made 21,152 orbits of the planet, and delivered 3.5 million pounds of payloads as America's Space Transportation System. Enterprise has since been transferred to the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum in New York and the Shuttle Discovery has taken her rightful place of honor in the Smithsonian museum.
To find the cache location, solve the following puzzle. Note that you don't need to go to Udvar Hazy to search for the cache. It can be reached from an office park that is just West of the museum.
Coordinates can be verified at Geochecker.com.