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CANAVERAL, Fla. - NASA's space shuttle Discovery moved a step closer towards
its planned July launch Friday as engineers delivered the orbiter to be mated
to its fuel
tank and rocket boosters.
Discovery
rolled into NASA's 52-story Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) here at the agency's
Kennedy Space Center at about 12:14 p.m. EDT (1612 GMT), where it will be
readied to fly the second shuttle flight since the 2003 Columbia accident.
"Of course
we're very excited," said Stephanie Stilson, NASA's flow manager for the
Discovery orbiter, after the spacecraft reached the VAB. "We couldn't ask for a
nicer day today to be rolling over."
Discovery
is slated to launch six shuttle astronauts and one space station crewmember to
the International Space Station (ISS) in early July during NASA's STS-121
mission. The space agency hopes to launch
the orbiter by July 1, but has until July 19 to make the space shot.
"It's
awesome that we're getting back to flight again," said Ken Revay, manager of
external tank and solid rocket booster operations for NASA contractor United Space
Alliance, in an interview. "That's what the team is put together to go do, and
we have the best in the world."
But Discovery's
road to the VAB has been long. The spacecraft returned
to KSC from California's Edwards Air Force Base - where it landed
after NASA's first post-Columbia mission
STS-114 - on Aug. 21, 2005, and spent months inside its hangar-like Orbiter
Processing Facility undergoing work for the next flight.
Engineers
replaced seven of the Discovery's 10 cockpit windows and changed out 5,104 of
the 15,000 gap-fillers between the thousands of heat-resistant tiles that line
the orbiter's underbelly. The measure, NASA hopes, will prevent gap-fillers
from jutting out during flight and adding a potential heat source during
reentry.
STS-114
spacewalker Stephen Robinson physically
removed two such protruding gap-fillers during the last shuttle
flight.
Shuttle
workers also had to repair the shuttle's robotic arm, which was damaged
during a string
of accidents that led KSC officials to call a work timeout to refocus
efforts to ensure worker and hardware safety.
"Every
person that works on this vehicle has accountability," Stilson said, adding
that the prolonged period between shuttle flights since the Columbia accident
may have left some workers rusty. "Anytime we have anything doesn't go the way
we expect, we all feel it."
Stilson
said very little work remains for Discovery, which is on track to roll out to
NASA's Pad 39B launch site in the early hours of May 19.
"The next
thing we're looking forward to is getting out to the pad," Stilson said.
Discovery's
STS-121 spaceflight will mark NASA's last test flight to check shuttle safety, repair
and inspection improvements before resuming ISS
construction.
The launch
will also test the orbiter's redesigned
external tank, which has been stripped
of a foam ramp to reduce the amount of potentially harmful debris during launch
and ascent. Foam debris at launch pierced Columbia's heat shield, dooming the
orbiter and its seven astronauts during reentry on Feb. 1, 2003.
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