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KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FLA. -- Inside High Bay 1 of the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) John Blue, with United Space Alliance, and Jorge Rivera, with NASA, look at the dings in the foam insulation on the external tank of Space Shuttle Discovery. About 150 dings were caused by hail during recent storms. The Shuttle was rolled back from Pad 39B to the VAB for repairs because access to all of the damaged areas was not possible at the pad. The work is expected to take two to three days, allowing Discovery to roll back to the pad as early as May 20 for launch of mission STS-96, the 94th launch in the Space Shuttle Program. Liftoff will occur no earlier than May 27. STS-96 is a logistics and resupply mission for the International Space Station, carrying such payloads as a Russian crane, the Strela; a U.S.-built crane; the Spacehab Oceaneering Space System Box (SHOSS), a logistics items carrier; and STARSHINE, a student-shared experiment KSC-99pp0537
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KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FLA. -- Inside High Bay 1 of the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) John Blue, with United Space Alliance, and Jorge Rivera, with NASA, look at the dings in the foam insulation on the external tank of Space Shuttle Discovery. About 150 dings were caused by hail during recent storms. The Shuttle was rolled back from Pad 39B to the VAB for repairs because access to all of the damaged areas was not possible at the pad. The work is expected to take two to three days, allowing Discovery to roll back to the pad as early as May 20 for launch of mission STS-96, the 94th launch in the Space Shuttle Program. Liftoff will occur no earlier than May 27. STS-96 is a logistics and resupply mission for the International Space Station, carrying such payloads as a Russian crane, the Strela; a U.S.-built crane; the Spacehab Oceaneering Space System Box (SHOSS), a logistics items carrier; and STARSHINE, a student-shared experiment
The Space Shuttle program was the United States government's manned launch vehicle program from 1981 to 2011, administered by NASA and officially beginning in 1972. The Space Shuttle system—composed of an orbiter launched with two reusable solid rocket boosters and a disposable external fuel tank— carried up to eight astronauts and up to 50,000 lb (23,000 kg) of payload into low Earth orbit (LEO). When its mission was complete, the orbiter would re-enter the Earth's atmosphere and lands as a glider. Although the concept had been explored since the late 1960s, the program formally commenced in 1972 and was the focus of NASA's manned operations after the final Apollo and Skylab flights in the mid-1970s. It started with the launch of the first shuttle Columbia on April 12, 1981, on STS-1. and finished with its last mission, STS-135 flown by Atlantis, in July 2011.
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