Engineers continue
to work feverishly to repair the hail-damaged fuel tank of NASA's Atlantis shuttle
in time for a mid-May launch, though space agency officials are still unsure
whether a replacement may be required.
"We still
don't know which tank we'll use for STS-117," William Gerstenmaier, NASA's
associate administrator for space operations, told a senate subcommittee this
week of Atlantis' mission. "We can still potentially make the May launch window
if we use this tank, if we don't we'll be in the June time frame."
NASA
officials have said that Atlantis could launch between mid-May and May 21 if
the shuttle's
fuel tank repairs, and a subsequent analysis, go well. Replacing the tank with
a new one would push the spaceflight to no earlier than June 8.
NASA is
expected to set a new launch target for Atlantis' STS-117 mission to the International Space
Station (ISS) on April 10.
The shuttle
and its six-astronaut crew were preparing for a planned March 15 liftoff from
NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida when a severe storm battered the
orbiter's foam-covered fuel tank with golf ball-sized hail on Feb. 26.
The
resulting damage left
thousands of dings in the vital foam insulation on Atlantis' external tank,
which engineers have been sanding smooth and repairing inside NASA's cavernous
Vehicle Assembly Building at KSC. Of the more than 2,500 dings in the fuel
tank, some 1,600 may require repair, NASA officials have said.
"It's going
to be very challenging," George Diller, a NASA spokesperson at KSC, told SPACE.com
of the time-consuming repair work. "There's a lot of work to do, but it's achievable."
A new shuttle fuel tank, originally
built for NASA's STS-118 shuttle flight but which could be used for STS-117,
will be shipped on Sunday or Monday from the agency's New Orleans-based Michoud
Assembly Facility, NASA officials said. It will arrive two days earlier than
expected at KSC in Cape Canaveral, Florida, they added.
"We're
expecting the next tank on [April] 8 if they don't run into weather that slows
them down en route," Diller said. "However, that is not going to speed the
decision process any...the tenth is still decision day."
Gerstenmaier
said that it will be the repair work's progress that will dictate when shuttle
mission managers will target Atlantis' launch date.
"We're
letting the work kind of drive the activity," Gerstenmaier said. "We're not picking
the launch date and then forcing the work to fit into that launch date."
Commanded
by veteran shuttle flyer Rick Sturckow, NASA's STS-117
mission is the first of several ISS construction flights
scheduled for 2007. The 11-day flight features three planned spacewalks to install
two new trusses and solar arrays to the station's starboard side.
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