NASA
engineers have attached the shuttle
Atlantis to its immense external fuel tank and twin rocket boosters,
bringing the spacecraft one step closer to a March
launch towards the International
Space Station (ISS).
Teams of shuttle
workers are going over the multitude of electrical and mechanical connections
between the 122-foot (37-meter) orbiter and its 15-story external tank, which
stand poised in launch position inside NASA's cavernous Vehicle Assembly
Building (VAB) at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida [image].
NASA
spokesperson George Diller told SPACE.com today that the standard series
of engineering checks between Atlantis and its external tank, known as the shuttle
interface test, should be complete by Monday. The nearly 100-ton shuttle, which
rolled from its maintenance hangar to the VAB on Wednesday [image],
is then slated to make the slow trek to NASA's Pad 39A launch site at 7:00 a.m.
EST (1200 GMT) on Feb. 14, he added.
Atlantis is
due to launch spaceward on March
15 with a six-astronaut
crew and a hefty pair of new solar arrays bound for the ISS. Commanded by
veteran spaceflyer Rick Sturckow, Atlantis' STS-117
astronauts plan to stage three spacewalks outside the ISS to install the
17.5-ton Starboard 3/Starboard 4 (S3/S4) solar array trusses to right side of
the orbital laboratory's metallic backbone.
Built by
Boeing, the nearly 45-foot (13-meter) integrated truss segments carry two solar
arrays that, when deployed, will have a wingspan of about 240 feet (73 meters).
The element is a near mirror-image of the space station's Port
3/Port 4 solar arrays installed by NASA's STS-115
astronaut crew in September
2006 and will balance out the orbital laboratory's current lopsided profile
[image].
Boeing
spokesperson Susan Wells told SPACE.com that the S3/S4 space station
trusses are already packed away in a NASA cargo container, and will be hauled
to the space agency's Pad 39A launch site soon to await Atlantis' arrival.
NASA's STS-117
mission is the first of up to five planned
shuttle flights to continue ISS construction in 2007.
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