Unusually cold weather is challenging Kennedy Space Center teams to prepare shuttle Discovery for a tanking test planned Wednesday morning. Technicians are installing roughly 90 gauges and sensors on the shuttle's external tank to collect data that could help explain what caused cracks in two external tank support brackets.
Orange insulating foam covering the 15-story tank is being cut away in various sections of the intertank, the mid-section of the tank on which 108 U-shaped brackets called "stringer" form vertical ridges that add structural support.
Cracks in two stringers were found after the shuttle was fueled for launch Nov. 5, and engineers haven't been able to explain why.
Workers have erected a special environmental enclosure to help control temperature conditions. But temperatures need to be about 75 degrees for sensors to bond properly to the tank's metal sub-surface.
Shuttle program managers are meeting today to finalize procedures for the tanking test, and waiting to see how weekend work progresses before setting the schedule.
Cold conditions at times next week could even violate temperature constraints for fueling, which will be the same as on a launch day.
Teams would be called to their stations on Monday for a Wednesday test, which has tentatively been planned to start at 7 a.m. A half-million gallons of supercold propellants will be loaded into the tank.
IMAGE: Shuttle Discovery recently on launch pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center. Credit NASA.
2 comments:
Who would have thought it'd be TOO Cold to load Liquid H and O into the ET!!!
Rick Steele
Sarasota
As if another delay wasn't expected again. At least this time it is Mother Nature who might delay the shuttle. We'll just have to keep waiting.
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