Space shuttle Discovery awaits its move, called rollback, from Launch Pad 39A to the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Rollback was scheduled for 12:30 a.m., but was postponed until 10 p.m. so technicians could resolve an issue with a leveling system on the crawler-transporter, which is to the left of the shuttle. Once inside the VAB, Discovery's external fuel tank will be examined and foam reapplied where 89 sensors were installed on the tank's aluminum skin for an instrumented tanking test on Dec. 17. The sensors were used to measure changes in the tank as super-cold propellants were pumped in and drained out. Data and analysis from the test will be used to determine what caused the tops of two, 21-foot-long support beams, called stringers, on the outside of the intertank to crack during fueling on Nov. 5. Discovery's next launch opportunity to the International Space Station on the STS-133 mission is no earlier than Feb. 3, 2011.
<bdi><a href="https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q117488166" class="extiw" title="d:Q117488166"><span title="American photographer">Frank Michaux</span></a>
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2010-12-21
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