atlantis_returns WASHINGTON --With its hydraulic system finally fixed, space shuttle Atlantis is set to take to the skies in less than a week -- returning to space for the first time in years.
Atlantis, now set to launch May 18, will be flying with a new power-drive unit that controls its rudder speed-brake needed to slow the vehicle during landing. A faulty unit was swapped out last week while the shuttle was poised on its seaside launch pad at Florida's Kennedy Space Center.
| Read More About the Atlantis Upgrade |
| Atlantis' Command Cabin Gets a 21st Century Makeover: The command cabin of Space Shuttle Atlantis just received a face-lift. Now it's got a newspace-age look that's straight from the information age. The Multifunction Electronic Display Subsystem (MEDS), or the glass cockpit as it's called, is a giantleap from the shuttle's classic 1970s analog look. Want to Learn More? |
Lost & Found: Tearing a shuttle apart can yield more than the usual dust balls, lint and hair. Boeing technicians in Palmdale, California who clean and outfit NASA's four shuttles have found coins, ink pens, a socket and a contact lens behind bulkhead panels or buried deep in the recesses of the spacecraft. Want to Learn More? |
That's not all that's new aboard Atlantis.
The shuttle is returning to NASA's fleet after a 20-mission, 62 million-mile tune-up -- the most extensive makeover ever done on a space shuttle.
The $68 million overhaul at Boeing's Plant 42 in Palmdale, California took 10 months and required a team of technicians working 24 hours a day in shifts. In all, they performed 433 inspections and made 167 major changes, 18 of which were unique to Atlantis.
Among the features flying for the first time in space are a $9 million state-of-the-art "glass cockpit," a navigation system based on Global Positioning System satellites and new valves and hoses designed to make it much safer.
Like its sister ships Discovery and Endeavour, Atlantis has a new airlock for docking at the International Space Station.
"Atlantis will be the safest shuttle we've ever flown," said Bill Readdy, a three-time shuttle pilot and deputy associate administrator for spaceflight at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
The overhaul ordered for Atlantis -- the second time in its 15 years of flying -- "allows you to get into the deep maintenanceand increases your confidence" in a shuttle's performance, Readdy said.
Atlantis leaves the hangar
Called Orbiter Major Modification, the program is sort of a high-tech spa for spacecraft -- part beauty salon, part weight-loss clinic and part doctor's office.
Flown from Cape Canaveral to Palmdale in November 1997 atop a Boeing 747, Atlantis arrived without its heavier pieces like the three main shuttle engines, each of which weighs 3.5 tons. Also left behind in Florida were certain interior items like the shuttle toilet.
At the Boeing plant 50 miles (80 kilometers) north of Los Angeles, workers hoisted Atlantis up on orange jacks, shrouded it in aluminum scaffolding and stripped it down to its lime-green aluminum airframe. Off came many of the 2 million components that make a space shuttle the most complex machine ever built.
Working from a 60,000-page script a foot thick, technicians put it through a series of X-ray and ultra-wave inspections to look for metal fatigue, corrosion or broken rivets.
The cargo-bay doors and hatches got buffed and insulated. The cockpit and mid-deck were gutted and cleaned. And workers checked all 230 miles (370 kilometers) of wires coursing through the spacecraft.
"Our priorities are upgrades that can reduce risk. Our long-term goal ismaking spaceflight as safe as commercial aviation."
Technicians installed a new lightweight thermal insulation to replace the older, heavier thermal blanket on the fuselage. Some of the shuttle's 24,000 black heat-shield tiles on the wings and nose that were cracked or dented were replaced with ones lighter and tougher.
The crew cabin and cargo bay required special care. They were enveloped in sheets of green plastic with filtered air pumped, turning them into "clean room" sections.
Both areas had to be kept antiseptically clean to protect the health of the astronauts and sensitive electronics. So any technicians working there had to first don clean-room "bunny suits" and pass through jets of air that blew away the tiniest dust particles.
After each area was inspected and upgraded, workers swabbed it down with an alcohol solution to sterilize it.
Atlantis also got a bit of a paint job. Artists removed the NASA "worm" logos from its right wing and upper-rear payload bay doors and replaced them with the original "meatball" logo that the space agency readopted in 1992 under NASA Administrator Dan Goldin.
The last items to be put back inside Atlantis were the crew seats. It left Palmdale for Cape Canaveral in September 1998, where technicians put on its main engines and other equipment in preparation for its trip to the International Space Station.
Space Shuttle Columbia has taken Atlantis' place at Palmdale. It went into the shop last September and is due out in July.
Further upgrades are ahead for all the shuttles, intended to make them twice as safe as they are now by 2005.
advertisement
