NASA
engineers are preparing once more to move a container filled with new
instruments and spare parts for the Hubble Space Telescope to the waiting
shuttle Atlantis after cleaning up bits of contamination from inside some of
the delicate hardware, space agency officials said Thursday.
The cargo
container is due to be hauled out to NASA's seaside Pad 39A launch site at the
Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., Saturday evening — two days late
— though the agency is still targeting
an Oct. 10 liftoff for Atlantis, NASA spokesperson Candrea Thomas told SPACE.com.
"Right now
we're evaluating the work to be done," Thomas said, adding that top shuttle
officials will set a formal launch date for Atlantis during a two-day meeting
to begin Oct. 2.
Shuttle
engineers initially planned to move the cargo to Atlantis today, but had to
stand down Wednesday after discovering
loose bits of insulation inside a plastic-wrapped bag protecting a pallet
packed with fresh batteries for Hubble and the space telescope's new Wide Field
Camera 3. The insulation had broken loose, then been blown about inside the protective
bag by a purge system, NASA officials said.
NASA has no
days left to spare if it is to ready Atlantis and its cargo in time for the
planned Oct. 10 launch of seven astronauts on one last service call to Hubble. If
the lost time cannot be made up, the 11-day servicing mission's launch could
slip a few days.
Commanded
by veteran astronaut Scott Altman, Atlantis' crew plans to stage five
back-to-back spacewalks to install new cameras, gyroscopes, batteries, a
docking ring and other equipment, as well as make tricky repairs to extend
Hubble's operational life through at least 2013.
But first,
the container with Hubble's new instruments and spare parts must be
installed inside the cargo bay of Atlantis at the launch pad. The payload
canister is expected to begin the 3.5-mile (5.6-km)
trek to Pad 39A Saturday evening at 6:00 p.m. EDT (2200 GMT), Thomas said.
"It's about
a four-hour process, so it should be there somewhere around 10:00 p.m.," she
added.
While
engineers prepare to move the cargo to Atlantis, the space shuttle's sister
ship Endeavour is being primed for a move of its own.
Shuttle
technicians are due to move Endeavour out of NASA's massive Vehicle Assembly
Building early Thursday at 12:01 a.m. EDT (0401 GMT) for a 4.2-mile (6.7-km) trip
to the nearby Launch Pad 39B.
Endeavour
is due to launch toward the International Space Station on Nov. 12 from Pad 39A
to deliver fresh food, supplies and new
life support equipment designed to support six-astronaut crews, twice the
size of current station expeditions. Before that, however, Endeavour must stand
by atop Pad 39B to serve as a rescue ship for Atlantis and its Hubble-servicing
astronaut crew.
Because
Atlantis must fly higher and in a different inclination that the space station
to reach Hubble, the shuttle will not be able to ferry its astronaut crew to
the orbiting laboratory to await rescue if its heat shield is damaged beyond
repair. NASA is priming Endeavour and a skeleton crew of four astronauts
commanded by veteran spaceflyer Dominic Gorie to retrieve the Atlantis crew and
scuttle the stricken orbiter, though mission managers and the astronauts,
themselves, have said it is extremely unlikely that any such rescue will be
required.
"It's a
very low probability of an event, but I'm glad that there's a relatively robust
plan to deal with it if it did happen," Altman has said in a NASA interview.
After
completing their Hubble overhaul, Altman and his crew are currently slated to
land late Oct. 20 at the Kennedy Space Center, after which NASA would move
Endeavour into launch position atop Pad 39A, the agency has said.
Atlantis' mission
to Hubble will be NASA's fourth of up to five shuttle flights planned for 2008.
Thursday's rollout of Endeavour to Launch Pad 39B will mark the first time since
2001 that two space shuttles have been at their respective launch pads at the
same time.
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