Fuel tank is coming

The Lockheed Martin plant in New Orleans that makes the shuttles' external fuel tanks is planning to ship a new tank Friday, weather permitting, managers decided today. The workers at the Michoud Assembly Facility have worked hard to recover from Hurricane Katrina and implement modifications to the tank, which is to propel the next orbiter. That flight is scheduled for May, pending wind-tunnel tests and analysis that should tell NASA whether it was safe for them to remove a stretch of potentially dangerous insulating foam on the tank. The foam is from the protuberance air load or PAL ramps that, in the past, protected cables that run up the side of the tank. That's where a chunk fell off during Discovery's launch last summer, raising fears of another Columbia-type accident.

This tank will ship to Kennedy Space Center without the PAL ramps. Read about the Michoud workers' struggle to recover from the hurricane and ship the tanks in Friday's Florida Today.