After an eight-hour delay
to replace a tire and wait out rain showers, shuttle Discovery on Wednesday
moved a step closer to its Kennedy Space Center launch pad.
Preparing for a Feb. 12
liftoff to the International Space Station, the orbiter was rolled from a
spaceport processing hangar to the 52-story Vehicle Assembly Building for
connections to an external tank and solid rocket boosters, planned for today.
"It gets the
spacecraft in position to support our targeted launch date," KSC
spokeswoman Candrea Thomas said of the process called a "rollover."
A 76-wheeled, 107-foot long
transporter carried Discovery about a quarter mile, a trip that began when the
shuttle backed slowly out of its hangar just before 2:30 p.m. EST and ended
less than an hour later.
Scheduled
to start at 6:30 a.m. EST, the rollover was delayed when workers overnight
found that Discovery's left outboard tire had lost pressure and needed to be
replaced.
Later, technicians examined
landing gear on the orbiter's right side to make sure an electrical cable was
positioned properly.
Early afternoon showers
forced the shuttle to remain sheltered, but soon after the rain cleared,
workers rolled the 25-year-old spaceship into the assembly building.
Discovery and its mobile
launcher platform are scheduled to move to launch pad 39A Wednesday.
The shuttle will deliver
the final piece of the space station's central backbone, a 31,000-pound girder
holding a pair of solar wings that will complete the station's power supply.
Space center workers on
Wednesday loaded the truss segment into the canister in which the payload will
be transported to the launch pad over the weekend.
On Friday, NASA managers
and Discovery's seven-person crew are scheduled to brief reporters on the
planned 14-day mission.
The crew, led by mission
commander Lee Archambault, is expected to visit KSC for three days of training
starting Jan. 19.
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