CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - An ongoing effort to dry out rain-soaked thermal tiles and a desire to give technicians a holiday weekend off work prompted NASA on Thursday to delay the upcoming launch of shuttle Atlantis to June 20 at the earliest.
Atlantis and a crew of five astronauts had been tentatively scheduled to launch June 14 on a mission to deliver a specially designed airlock to the International Space Station.
The slip to June 20 is intended to give technicians extra time to "bake" rain-soaked thermal tiles critical to protecting astronaut crews. At the same time, the delay will enable technicians to take the upcoming Memorial Day weekend off work.
"The baking process is taking longer than anticipated," said Kennedy Space Center spokesman Bruce Buckingham. "We've also decided we're going to honor Memorial Day and not try to move Atlantis until after the holiday weekend."
Atlantis had been scheduled to move this week from its processing hangar to the KSC Vehicle Assembly Building, but the trip is being delayed until next Tuesday at the earliest to give technicians more time to dry out wet tiles.
The problem with the tiles cropped up when Atlantis was exposed to four days of pouring rain after a Feb. 20 landing at Edwards Air Force Base in California. The Mojave Desert military base is not equipped with protective shuttle hangars like those here at NASA's coastal Florida spaceport.The rain soaked at least 500 of more than 20,000 thermal tiles that protect the spaceship and its crew from the intense heat experienced during atmospheric reentry.
Engineers are concerned that wet tiles exposed to frigid temperatures in orbit could come loose or even fall off, breaching the ship's crucial thermal protection system.
The suspect tiles are located on the belly of the shuttle near the leading edge of its right wing and its left-hand landing gear door.
The soaked tiles in recent weeks had been "baked" with high-intensity heat lamps in a bid to dry them out, and most in fact had been cleared for flight. But a more recent examination showed that many of the custom-made tiles are still too wet to fly safely.
Technicians, consequently, are continuing efforts to dry out the wet tiles so the shuttle can be moved to the 52-story assembly building after the Memorial Day holiday.
Once in the assembly building, Atlantis will be hoisted atop a mobile launcher platform and then connected to a 15-story external tank and attached solid rocket boosters. Several days of testing will follow to verify mechanical and electrical connections between the orbiter, its launcher platform, the tank and the twin boosters.
Atlantis tentatively is scheduled to move from the assembly building to launch pad 39B on June 2. Two to three weeks of prep work will remain once Atlantis reaches the pad.
Still unclear is whether a planned June 19 launch of a Lockheed Martin Atlas rocket from nearby Cape Canaveral Air Force Station might prompt an additional delay in the shuttle launch.
A far-flung network of Air Force ground stations known as the Eastern Range will be used to provide tracking and range safety services for both the Atlas and shuttle launches. But the Eastern Range can only support one launch every 24 hours.
The Atlas already has booked the Eastern Range for a back-up launch attempt on June 20. So a one-day slip in its flight would result in a June 21 launch attempt for the Atlantis mission.
Led by veteran astronaut Steve Lindsey, the Atlantis crew plans to deliver NASA's so-called Joint Airlock to the international station. Shaped like a giant Genie bottle, the airtight chamber will serve as a staging area for spacewalking construction and maintenance work at the outpost.
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