The California Science Center museum has received what officials describe as an “extraordinary” financial contribution to the new Air and Space Center that will house the space shuttle Endeavour.

The gift, to be announced at a news conference Thursday, comes from a foundation chaired by Lynda Oschin, wife of the late Los Angeles businessman and philanthropist Samuel Oschin, whose name already graces the Griffith Observatory planetarium and the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center cancer institute stemming from charitable contributions there.

At Oschin’s request, officials would not disclose the amount of the gift. But they called it “transformational” for the free state-run museum in South Los Angeles, adjacent to USC.

Clint Bradford