Once on display at the Kennedy Space Center, the boosters were the most powerful solid rocket motors ever flown. Each provided over 3 million pounds of thrust — enough to push the shuttle’s tank and orbiter into orbit before dropping into the Atlantic Ocean. About 270 boosters were built over the life of the space shuttle program, which lasted from 1981 until 2011.

The rocket played a pivotal role in the 1986 Challenger disaster, when a leaky seal in one of the shuttle’s boosters caused its fuel tanks to collapse and the orbiter to break apart. All seven of its crew members died.

At March Field, the booster will memorialize the astronauts who died on the Challenger mission and during the 2003 Columbia disaster, which killed its seven-person crew.

NASA and the museum split the $65,000 cost of acquiring and transporting the booster from the space agency’s Armstrong Flight Research Center on Edwards Air Force Base in California, the Riverside Press-Enterprise reports. The booster’s twin is part of the collection of the Pima Air and Space Museum in Tucson.