Last shuttle main engines installed at KSC

Kennedy Space Center technicians this week installed a set of shuttle main engines for the last time.

The three reusable Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne main engines were inserted into the back of Atlantis, which would fly the third and final shuttle mission next year if Congress approves the funding.

Engines are already installed in Discovery, which sits on launch pad 39A, and Endeavour, which is next in line to fly in April.

The engines installed in Atlantis have flown a combined 30 times previously. Here's the history:
-- Engine No. 1, unit 2047, has flown 15 times;
-- Engine No. 2, unit 2060, has flown three times;
-- Engine No. 3, unit 2045, has flown 12 times.

The last engine, Engine No. 2, was installed Thursday in Orbiter Processing Facility-1. Each engine is 14 feet long and weighs about 7,800 pounds, with a bell-shaped nozzle measuring eight feet in diameter.

The main engines ignite 6.6 seconds before liftoff and fire for the nearly nine-minute climb to orbit, burning more than 500,000 gallons of propellant stored in the external tank at a rate that would drain an average family swimming pool in 25 seconds.

The energy released by three of the engines is equivalent to the output of 13 Hoover Dams.

PWR teams remove and service the engines each flight. Orbiters displayed during retirement won't have their engines. They may be kept for propulsion tests or use by another vehicle, or some made available for public display.


IMAGE: In Orbiter Processing Facility-1 at Kennedy Space Center, engine #2, the last of three space shuttle main engines is installed in shuttle Atlantis. Credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett