NASA
mission managers will discuss repair efforts to the space shuttle Atlantis'
hail-battered fuel tank today, and are expected to lay out plans for the
orbiter's return to the launch pad next week.
Shuttle
officials are slated to begin meeting at about 9:00 a.m. EDT (1300 GMT) to
evaluate repairs to thousands of dings and divots etched into Atlantis' fuel
tank during a freak
Feb. 26 hail storm above its Pad 39A launch pad at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. The resulting damage delayed
the shuttle's planned STS-117 mission from March 15 to no earlier than June
8.
"They're
feeling pretty good about that right now," NASA spokesperson Kyle Herring, of
the agency's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, told SPACE.com of the
repair work. "June 8, right now, continues to be the internal target launch
date."
In addition
to going over Atlantis' fuel tank repair work, shuttle officials will also
discuss progress on propellant line inspections for the orbiter's three main
engines, NASA officials said.
Herring
said NASA shuttle managers are targeting May 16 as the date to haul Atlantis
back to its Pad 39A launch site from its berth inside the agency's cavernous Vehicle Assembly Building at KSC.
Commanded
by veteran shuttle astronaut Rick Sturckow, Atlantis' STS-117 mission will deliver
new solar arrays to the International Space Station during a planned 11-day
spaceflight. The mission will also ferry
NASA astronaut Clayton Anderson to the ISS, where he will relieve U.S. spaceflyer Sunita Williams as part of the outpost's Expedition 15 crew.
NASA
shuttle officials will discuss the results of today's meeting during an
afternoon teleconference with reporters, the space agency said.
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