A team of
engineers is taking a meticulous look at the hail-damaged
fuel tank of NASA's shuttle
Atlantis to determine how best to repair its weather-beaten surface for a planned
April launch to the International
Space Station (ISS).
"We're kind
of working our way down the tank to assess it," Harry Wadsworth, a spokesperson
for shuttle fuel
tank manufacturer Lockheed Martin, told SPACE.com Thursday. "We
should have a go-forward plan early next week to take to the space shuttle
program."
A freak
thunderstorm centered right over NASA's Pad 39 launch complex at the
Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Cape Canaveral, Florida peppered Atlantis' fuel
tank with golf ball-sized hail on Feb. 26, gouging thousands of dings in the
vessel's vital foam insulation [image].
Atlantis
was slated
launch its six-astronaut STS-117 crew towards the ISS on March 15,
though shuttle mission managers opted to delay
the space shot to late April to make repairs.
The shuttle
left
its Pad 39A launch site on March 4 for the shelter of NASA's cavernous 52-story Vehicle Assembly
Building [image].
Once there, work crews surrounded the orbiter's fuel tank with scaffolding in
order to reach its pockmarked nose cap, which sits about 184 feet (56 meters)
above the Mobile Launch Platform that supports the attached shuttle, fuel tank
and twin rocket boosters [image].
Wadsworth
said a team of about six tank specialists headed to NASA's Kennedy Space Center
in Cape Canaveral, Florida this week from the New Orleans-based Michoud
Assembly Facility, where
shuttle fuel tanks are manufactured.
Some foam sanding
or blending to address extremely minor damage may be performed this week, but
the primary goal is to survey Atlantis' fuel tank and draw up a comprehensive
repair plan, Wadsworth said.
NASA
shuttle workers are also eyeing minor dings to 27 protective heat-resistant
tiles on Atlantis' underside. Launch officials have said ricocheting hail may
have circumvented the shroud-like Rotating Service Structure at Atlantis'
launch pad, which protect orbiters from weather, to cause the dings.
Damage to
fuel tank foam insulation has been a prime concern for NASA since 2003, when a chunk of
loose foam shook loose during the launch of Columbia and struck the orbiter's
left wing. The resulting damage to the Columbia's heat shield led to the loss of the orbiter and its seven-astronaut
crew during reentry.
NASA has
since redesigned
shuttle fuel tanks to reduce the amount of foam shed during liftoff and
developed in-orbit inspection procedures, as well as some limited repair
techniques, to address the problem in orbit if required. But ensuring a tank is
fit to fly in the first place is imperative, NASA officials said.
"What the
program has cautioned everyone is, 'Let's let the team go off and do their
work,'" Jessica Rye, a NASA spokesperson at KSC, told SPACE.com.
"They've got a lot of inspections to do. We want a full story on what the tank
team feels needs to be done."
Commanded
by veteran shuttle flyer Rick
Sturckow, Atlantis' STS-117
astronaut crew is slated to launch no earlier than late April to haul a
17.5-ton addition to the space station's core framework and two starboard solar
arrays.
The mission
is NASA's first of up to five ISS construction flights slated for 2007, but
must wait until after a 10-day ISS crew
swap mission to begin with the planned April 7 launch of a Russian Soyuz
spacecraft.
advertisement
