Rescue shuttle prepped for trip to launch pad
The space shuttle Endeavour, the designated rescue ship for next month's Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission in case something goes awry, was hauled from its processing hangar to the vehicle assembly building at the Kennedy Space Center in Orlando, Fla., early Friday.
Inside the vehicle assembly building, the shuttle will be attached to an external tank and solid-fuel boosters. Rollout to pad 39B is planned for April 17.
The shuttle Atlantis already is mounted atop pad 39A for work to ready the ship for blastoff on May 12, at 10:31 a.m. PDT, on a fifth and final mission to service and upgrade the space telescope. It is the only flight left on NASA's shuttle manifest that is not bound for the International Space Station.
Because the Hubble Space Telescope and the space station are in different orbits, the Atlantis crew cannot seek safe haven aboard the lab complex if the shuttle experiences any sort of problem that might prevent a safe re-entry. As a result, NASA is processing Endeavour in parallel for a quick-response launch from pad 39B if a rescue mission is required.
Space shuttle Endeavour is hauled out of its processing hangar early Friday for a short trip to the vehicle assembly building.
(Credit: Justin Ray/Spaceflightnow.com)
Endeavour moves into the vehicle assembly building for attachment to an external fuel tank and two solid-fuel boosters. Rollout to pad 39B is scheduled for April 17.
(Credit: Justin Ray/Spaceflightnow.com)
William Harwood has been covering the U.S. space program full-time since 1984, first as Cape Canaveral bureau chief for United Press International and now as a consultant for CBS News. He has covered more than 115 shuttle missions, every interplanetary flight since Voyager 2's flyby of Neptune, and scores of commercial and military launches. Based at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Harwood is a devoted amateur astronomer and co-author of "Comm Check: The Final Flight of Shuttle Columbia." You can follow his frequent status updates at the CBSNews.com Space Place, where this story was first published. 
The last time they set up two shuttles ready for launch, the picture was so moving. Think about what that says about the capability of the shuttle system and humanity. At that moment, we are capable of launching 14 humans into space. As we think about ending shuttle flights I believe we should park one at the space station as its final reseting spot. It would add more space to the station and another robot arm. As systems failed to a point that they could not be repaired and we could no longer occupy it, it could be used as a shield for space junk. Of course it adds more mass and so that might make it more risky for the station. It would take up a dock which would be an issue if we ever get a lot of flights headed there. In the long run it would be great if we could afford a special tug to put the shuttle in space somewhere as a tribute to our early ships. A Shuttle deserves to end up "off earth".
it would be a good place to keep spare fuel and such and add more lab space. Making it useful.. but i think we should launch it unmanned.. remote control it (it can be done, or was done the first time i think) and place it somewhere *HIGH* *HIGH* into a safe orbit where it wont fall.
put some solar panels on it and a *simple* system that will do something simple like transmit a message via radio that can be picked up by kids?
a time capsule of sorts?
put replicas of things of the them the shuttles have been around?
- by sythara April 10, 2009 12:40 PM PDT
- Space Shuttles is a doomed program from the start. There is a reason why Russia abandoned Buran program, same reasons why NASA is abandoning the Shuttle program now.
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- by global-warming_is_BS April 24, 2009 10:04 PM PDT
- Doomed? The most complex piece of machinery ever built. 130 successful missions 2 failures. For a craft that was screwed up by congress forcing NASA to build a machine that could do a bunch of things, but none of them well, the shuttle has been as successful as one could expect.
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(5 Comments)Shuttle never delivered what was promised, and if it were done by any commercial entity that is responsible to the shareholder, the program would ahve been scrapped years ago. The only reason why we didnt do it is because it took lo long for it to mature that people have forgotten what was originally promised.
Not saying space exploration and research is bad, just the waste of money the Shuttle has been is atrocious.
The Soviets didn't abandon Buran, they simply did not have the technology or money to finish the project. The country was going bankrupt at the time.