CAPE CANAVERAL - -- Shuttle
Discovery will stay at the launch pad a few extra days so inspectors can check
its landing gear for cracks.
Kennedy Space Center
workers recently spotted tiny cracks in sistership Atlantis' landing gear, and
NASA wants to make sure the flaw is not fleetwide before Discovery flies the
first shuttle mission since the 2003 Columbia catastrophe, agency spokeswoman
Jessica Rye said Sunday.
A crawler-transporter was
to haul
Discovery back to the Vehicle Assembly Building early Tuesday morning. Now,
rollback is set for Friday.
Meanwhile, inspectors will
use a borescope -- a rigid tube with a camera on its end -- to peer inside the
wheel well looking for gear defects.
Engineering photographs of
Discovery's gear, taken before the shuttle rolled to the launch pad, show no
cracks. Engineers want another look. The reason: The gear is critical to the
safety of the shuttle. The cracked part in Atlantis' gear is the uplock
mechanism, a hook of sorts that keeps the landing gear in place during flight
but must work so the wheels deploy properly as the orbiter glides to the
runway.
After the inspection, NASA
plans an auxiliary power unit test-firing Wednesday and rollback on Friday.
Once back inside the VAB, shuttle workers will move Discovery from one set of
tank and solid rocket boosters to another modified to resolve concerns about ice
debris and a glitchy valve. Current plans
call for Discovery to return to the pad in mid-June and launch sometime between
July 13 and July 31.
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