CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. A $164 million airlock was loaded into shuttle Atlantis Tuesday while astronauts on the International Space Station tested a software patch designed to skirt recent problems with a new robot arm required to mount it to the outpost.
Working at a towering launch gantry here Kennedy Space Center, technicians installed the 6.5-ton airlock within the cargo bay of Atlantis, which now is scheduled to launch next month on a mission to deliver the decompression chamber to the orbital complex.
Station flight engineers Susan Helms and Jim Voss, meanwhile, successfully tested a software patch designed to mask recent problems with the shoulder joint of the arm, which must be working properly to attach the airlock to the outpost.
"The software patch appears to be working as advertised," NASA spokeswoman Eileen Hawley said from the agencys Mission Control Center in Houston, Texas. "There were no problems reported by either the crew or ground controllers."
Atlantis and a crew of five astronauts remain scheduled to launch July 12 on a mission to deliver the airlock to the station, where it will serve as a staging area for spacewalking construction and maintenance work to be done outside the 17-story complex.
Targeted launch dates of June 20 and July 7 were pushed back to give engineers time to sort out nagging problems with the stations new $600 million Canadian robot arm, which was hauled up to the outpost by a visiting shuttle crew in April.
Engineers in recent weeks traced the problems to a faulty computer chip set associated with an electronics unit that enables the arms shoulder joint to maneuver.
Beamed up to the station and tested for the first time Tuesday, the software patch is designed to bypass the chip set and prevent the arm from automatically shutting down during the airlock installation job.
With the airlock now nestled in the shuttle, technicians over the next several days will conduct tests aimed at verifying electrical and mechanical connections between the spaceship and its prime payload.
The astronauts destined to fly aboard Atlantis, meanwhile, will be at KSC this week to take part in a two-day practice countdown.
Led by veteran astronaut Steve Lindsey, the crew also includes pilot Charles Hobaugh and mission specialists Janet Kavandi, Michael Gernhardt and Jim Reilly.
Gernhardt and Reilly are to conduct three spacewalks to install the airlock and associated oxygen and nitrogen tanks during the planned 11-day mission, which is to be capped with a July 23 landing here at NASAs coastal Florida spaceport.
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