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Shuttle Atlantis rolls off launch pad for repairs BY JUSTIN RAY SPACEFLIGHT NOW Posted: March 4, 2007 Battered by an intense hail storm six days earlier, space shuttle Atlantis retreated off launch pad 39A and returned to the cavernous Vehicle Assembly Building on Sunday to undergo thorough inspections and repairs.
Crews immediately began work to place access platforms around the shuttle for an upclose examination of the hail strikes. The methods for fixing the pitted insulating foam on the external fuel tank and the time needed to carry out such work will be determined in the coming days. A severe storm swept over pad 39A around 5 p.m. Monday and dropped hail the size of golf balls, causing thousands of chips and divots in the orange foam covering the tank. The heatshield on the orbiter's left wing also experienced wind-blown hail impacts. Initial examinations at the pad revealed more than two dozen of the ship's black tiles sustained surface damage. "This constitutes, in our evaluation, the worst damage that we have ever seen from hail on the external tank foam," said Wayne Hale, the shuttle program manager. "We have had hail a number of times in the past, hail is not unusual in Florida. ... But usually the hail is quite small and rarely causes damage. "This was large, wind-driven, damaging hail. It is very clear a number of these areas need to be repaired." The lack of adequate access to the widespread damage at the launch pad meant NASA had no choice but return the shuttle to the Vehicle Assembly Building.
A Russian Soyuz capsule with the Expedition 15 long-duration resident crew is scheduled for blastoff from Kazakhstan on April 7. The outgoing Expedition 14 crew returns to Earth aboard its Soyuz on April 19. Since station controllers require at least a few days between the departure of one craft and the arrival of the next, Atlantis won't launch before late April. An official target launch date has not been established. Rollbacks have been relatively rare occurrences over the life of the shuttle program. NASA said that Sunday's move was the 18th since 1983, with the majority caused by technical problems. A handful were prompted due to the threat of tropical weather and hurricanes. Two previous rollbacks were required to repair external tank foam. Woodpeckers drilled nearly 200 holes on the tank for shuttle Discovery's STS-70 mission in 1995 and hail caused damage before Discovery's STS-96 flight in 1999. A complete list of rollbacks is available here.
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Current Shuttle Mission Patch The official embroidered patch for shuttle Atlantis' flight to deliver critical spare equipment to the space station.Ares 1-X Patch The official embroidered patch for the Ares 1-X rocket test flight, is available for purchase.Apollo Collage This beautiful one piece set features the Apollo program emblem surrounded by the individual mission logos.![]() Project Orion The Orion crew exploration vehicle is NASA's first new human spacecraft developed since the space shuttle a quarter-century earlier. The capsule is one of the key elements of returning astronauts to the Moon.Fallen Heroes Patch Collection The official patches from Apollo 1, the shuttle Challenger and Columbia crews are available in the store. |
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