CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- A weekend spent hovering over heat lamps proved enough to dry out shuttle Atlantis' delicate heat shield tiles and clear the way for next month's launch.
Kennedy Space Center (KSC) technicians were to move the ship Tuesday to the Vehicle Assembly Building where it will join this week with an external liquid-fuel tank and twin solid-fuel rockets. However, the ride was delayed again by several hours as storms approached. Managers also did not want to move the orbiter during a shift change.
The stack could move to the launch pad as early as Sunday, NASA spokesman Joel Wells said.
Atlantis is scheduled to launch June 20 at 1:45 p.m. EDT (17:45 GMT) on a mission to Space Station Alpha.
The orbiter rode a squat yellow truck to the large hangar for 20 minutes, but workers had waited days to get the move started.
The problem has been about 600 wet heat shield tiles on Atlantis' belly. NASA feared the moisture would freeze in space, expand and break up the tiles. That could leave gaps in the overall heat shield, allowing the 2,000- to 3,000-degree heat to melt Atlantis as it reentered the atmosphere.
Although the tile problem has been solved, NASA and United Space Alliance workers still will have to hurry to meet the June 20 launch date.
The space agency prefers its shuttles to undergo about 20 days of preparations for launch. The current schedule calls for 17.
KSC's work force is not the only group watching the launch clock.
In Houston, station controllers still try to work out the bugs in the outpost's newly attached robot arm. Weekend testing did not solve troubles with the 57-foot- (17-meter-) long remote crane, NASA spokesman Rob Navias said.
Their latest hope is a computer program "patch" developed by the Canadian agency that built the arm. The code was to be beamed to the station Tuesday and tested Wednesday.
The primary control and power system works well, but NASA is not comfortable launching Atlantis and its payload until the arm's primary and backup systems both check out.
Atlantis will carry an airlock to the station. Because of the airlock's location, the station's arm will be needed to move it into place. Atlantis' own arm will not be of any use.
Alpha astronauts could extend a June 8 spacewalk by several hours to replace a computer near the arm's elbow if the problems persist.
Managers will decide Thursday on a launch date for Atlantis, and will determine Friday whether to have the station crew replace the arm's computer.
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