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NASA Sets Space Shuttle Launch for August 27

Posted on: Wednesday, 16 August 2006, 15:40 CDT

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida -- NASA will attempt to launch space shuttle Atlantis on August 27 to restart construction of the half-built International Space Station, officials of the U.S. space agency said on Wednesday.

"We set the launch date for the 27th, I think it's around 4:30 in the afternoon, so we're ready to go for that," Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA's associate administrator for space operations, told reporters at Cape Canaveral in Florida.

NASA managers said they were also considering an unprecedented and complicated last-minute repair job at the launch pad to replace ill-fitting bolts that anchor the shuttle's main communications antenna to the cargo bay wall.

Wayne Hale, the shuttle program manager, said it was likely the bolts would have to be changed.

"One way or the other we're not going to have a problem with the antenna," Hale said at the news conference.

Atlantis' mission will be the first shuttle flight to resume construction of the half-built $100 billion space station since the shuttle Columbia fell apart over Texas in 2003.

Two shuttle missions conducted since Columbia tested safety upgrades designed to avoid a repeat of the accident, when falling insulation foam from the external fuel tank knocked a hole in the shuttle's wing on liftoff. Superheated atmospheric gases tore into the breach two weeks later upon reentry.

Construction of the space station, meanwhile, has been on hold because the U.S. shuttles are the only spacecraft capable of carrying its larger components into orbit.

Resumption of the assembly of the orbital outpost, a multi-nation project, became possible after the safe return to Earth last month of space shuttle Discovery. Its 13-day mission successfully tested repair techniques and ways to examine the shuttle's fragile heat shield while in space.

While NASA managers said they were confident Atlantis would be ready by August 27, repair work on the bolts could become complicated. Engineers found the problem after the shuttle was taken to the launch pad for final flight preparations.

Two of the four bolts that hold the Ku-band antenna in place do not meet specifications for flight, though the ship has been flying with the ill-fitting hardware since its first mission in October 1985.

NASA is concerned that if the bolts come loose, the antenna could crash down inside the 60-foot-long (18.3-metre-long) payload bay during launch, with potentially catastrophic results.

Similarly faulty material aboard the space shuttles Discovery and Endeavour have previously been replaced.

Accessing the antenna, which is used for voice, data and television relays, will be difficult while the shuttle is positioned nose-up at the launch pad. The bolts are six stories up, Hale said.

"This has got all kinds of implications that you'd rather not do," Hale said. "If they do find out we can really live -- almost literally -- without these two bolts then we don't go through the bother of changing them out."

NASA's engineers have devised a plan to position work platforms and move the shuttle's robotic arm and inspection boom to reach the antenna.

The cargo bay is filled with a 35,000-pound (15,880-kg) structural truss and power module the shuttle's six astronauts plan to install on the space station.

Source: REUTERS

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