Free Republic

Workers started assembling twin solid rocket boosters this week to help power Endeavour toward orbit in February on the final scheduled launch of the space shuttle program. A heavy-lifting crane hoisted the aft segment of the shuttle's left solid rocket booster Monday and moved the motor atop a mobile launcher platform. The boosters for Endeavour's STS-134 mission are being stacked inside High Bay 1 of the Kennedy Space Center's cavernous Vehicle Assembly Building. Crews repeated the procedure Tuesday and lifted the right booster's aft segment from the VAB's transfer aisle into High Bay 1. It will take about three weeks...

NASA and Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company have paid tribute to the workforce who built the external tanks for the space shuttle fleet. The last external tank scheduled to fly on a shuttle mission was completed on June 25 by Lockheed Martin workers at Michoud. "ET-138 is the last in a series of tanks that has provided increasingly safer launches of space shuttles," said John Honeycutt, manager of the External Tank project. The tank was scheduled to depart after the ceremony Thursday aboard the Pegasus barge on a six-day, 900-mile sea journey to NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida where...

NASA managers this week plan to request new launch dates for the final two shuttle flights to accommodate preparations on space station equipment slated to fly on the STS-133 mission, originally targeted for September. If approved, NASA would postpone until Oct. 29 the launch of shuttle Discovery on STS-133, which includes installation of the modified Multi-Purpose Logistics Module Leonardo cargo carrier for long-duration flight on the station and delivery of spare parts for several key station systems. Previously scheduled missions by international partners and Sun angle heating issues would in turn bump shuttle Endeavour’s launch with the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer,...