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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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The STS-117 astronauts meet the press during the traditional pre-flight news conference held at the Johnson Space Center a month prior to launch. The six-person crew will deliver and activate a solar-power module for the International Space Station.
After a six-hour trip along the three-and-a-half-mile crawlerway from the Vehicle Assembly Building, space shuttle Atlantis arrives at launch pad 39A for the STS-117 mission.
Space shuttle Atlantis emerges from its processing hangar at dawn February 7 for the short trip to the Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center's Complex 39.
This documentary takes a look at the technical aspects of Project Mercury, including development of the capsule and the pioneering first manned flights of America's space program.
The voyage of Apollo 15 took man to the Hadley Rille area of the moon. Astronauts Dave Scott and Jim Irwin explored the region using a lunar rover, while Al Worden remained in orbit conducting observations. "Apollo 15: In the Mountains of the Moon" is a NASA film looking back at the 1971 flight.
VIDEO:
TIME-LAPSE MOVIE FROM SUNDAY'S ROLLBACK 