CAPE CANAVERAL - NASA aims
to move up the planned launch of shuttle Endeavour to Aug. 7 while Atlantis is
headed for a weekend return to Kennedy Space Center.
Now scheduled for Aug. 9,
the launch of Endeavour on an International Space Station construction mission
will mark the orbiter's first
flight since 2002. Shuttle managers are expected to move the target date
during a meeting Thursday.
NASA plans to move
Endeavour from its processing hangar to the 52-story Vehicle Assembly Building
next Monday, three days early. The fully assembled shuttle is set to be rolled
out to Pad 39A about July 9.
Atlantis, meanwhile,
appears to have come through its station
assembly mission relatively unscathed. Inspectors found just 10 heat-shield
tiles with gouges greater than an inch long.
A thermal blanket repaired
during a spacewalk peeled back about an inch during re-entry, but no damage was
done to the graphite epoxy rocket pod that it protects, NASA said.
Technicians this week are
preparing Atlantis for a ferry flight back to KSC. The orbiter landed
Friday at Edwards Air Force Base in California because of bad weather at
the Cape. Atlantis will be bolted to the top of a modified 747 jet, which is to
leave Edwards on Friday. The trip probably will take at least two days.
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