Booster Segment For Last Shuttle Flight Moves To VAB

The top segment for one of two solid rocket boosters that will propel Endeavour on NASA's last scheduled shuttle flight arrived at the Kennedy Space Center Vehicle Assembly Building this morning after a move from a nearby refurbishment facility.

Endeavour and six astronauts are scheduled to blast off at 4:04 p.m. Feb. 26 from launch pad 39A on a mission to deliver large spare parts and a cosmic ray detector to the International Space Station. It will be the 36th and final flight launched in the assembly and maintenance of the station, the first two building blocks of which were linked in low Earth orbit in late 1998. NASA is lobbying for one additional shuttle mission to the station next June, but it's not clear yet whether Congress will approve funding for the extra flight.

The two segmented solid rocket boosters for the Endeavour mission are being stacked in High Bay No. 1 of the 52-story Vehicle Assembly Building. The Forward Assembly for one of those boosters was moved today from the Assembly and Refurbishment Facility a few miles south of the VAB. The Low Bay of the VAB is used to store Forward Assemblies prior to stacking operations.

The forward section of each booster contains avionics, a sequencer, forward separation motors, a nose cone separation system, drogue and main parachutes, a recovery beacon, a recovery light, a parachute camera on selected flights and a range safety system.

IMAGE NOTE: Click to enlarge the cell phone shot of the Forward Assembly before it was moved into the Low Bay of the VAB. Photo credit: Todd Halvorson/Florida Today.