Images- Space Station's New Window on the World.?The weather looks very good for a Thursday launch,? hesaid. Beutel said both issueshave been resolved, giving GOES-P a good chance to fly Thursday. Launch of GOES-P was initially slated to Tuesday, but hasbeen delayed due to weather and technical concerns. The new satellite storm is designed to track storm developmentand weather conditions on Earth. Meanwhile, NASA is also gearing up for a launch of adifferent kind this week.Īn unmanned Delta 4 rocket is due to launch the newGOES-P weather satellite for NASA and the National Oceanic and AtmosphericAdministration (NOAA). ?We?re really looking forward to our dress rehearsal forlaunch,? Poindexter said. The training session is a standard one for every missionand is called the Terminal Countdown Demonstration Test. Poindexter and his crew will speak with reporters about theirmission on Thursday and then spend Friday staging a dress rehearsal of launchday, capping it with an emergency escape drill.
LEGO SPACE SHUTTLE LAUNCH PAD UPGRADE
Threespacewalks are planned for the mission to upgrade and maintain the station?ssystems. That delay forced NASA to wait until warmer weather arrivedbefore moving the shuttle to the cavernous Vehicle Assembly Building to be attachedto its 15-story external tank and twin solid rocket boosters.Īs a result, the space agency pushed back Discovery?slaunch to April 5 due to the weather and in order to avoid a space traffic jamat the space station, which will see a crew change at the end of March andearly April.ĭiscovery is slated to fly a 13-daymission to the space station to deliver a cargo module filled with tons ofscience equipment and other supplies for the orbiting laboratory. The shuttle?s STS-131 was also previously scheduled tolaunch on March 18, but cold weather in Florida kept Discovery insideits hangar for longer than expected. Shuttle technicians currently have about a week of cushiontime in their schedule to prepare Discovery for flight, so the delayed trek to thelaunch pad should not affect plans for the shuttle?s April 5 blastoff, Beutelsaid. NASA initially planned to move Discovery to its launchpad on Tuesday, but the threat of rain and lightning forced a one-day delay. 21 after delivering a new room and stunning viewportthat allows astronauts on the station to see Earthfrom space like never before. The most recent mission was aboard Endeavour, which returned fromthe space station on Feb. NASA has flown 130 shuttle missions since the firstflight in 1981. There are four shuttle flights left, including Discovery?supcoming STS-131 mission. NASA plans to retire its three aging space shuttles inSeptember after the final mission ? also aboard Discovery ? returns to Earthfrom the space station. ?They?reletting employees and their families, folks who worked on the shuttle theirentire lives, get a chance to see a rollout.? ?It?s a special employee event,? Beutel said. The visitorswere given passes to bring their families and watch the spaceship they?veworked on for years make its penultimate trip to the launch pad, NASAspokesperson Allard Beutel told. A crew of around 30 technicians accompanied Discovery?smove to the launch pad, which used NASA?s massive Apollo-era crawler carrier vehiclebuilt to move the combined 12 million-pound (5.4 million-kg) load of itself anda space.īut NASA also invited more than 200 shuttle workers andtheir families to watch Discovery make its way to the launch pad.
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