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<\/em><\/font><\/font><\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/font> <\/p>\n **STS-115 LIVE UPDATES**<\/em><\/font><\/p>\n The bolts holding the KU band antenna in place in Atlantis\u2019 cargo bay proved to be the biggest topic of discussion at the FRR, with foam liberation concerns on the External Tank being diluted, following a clean STS-121 last month. <\/font><\/p>\n Evaluations on what to do with the bolts are still on-going, but not seriousness enough to affect the launch date \u2013 despite a previous NASA memo noting that a changeout of the bolts would lead to a rollback of the stack into the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB). <\/font><\/p>\n \u2018Some 25 or 30 years ago a mistake was made in the design of this particular component, in the way this antenna is bolted on the orbiter. For the last 25 years we\u2019ve been flying with these thread fasteners \u2013 these bolts that barely have a thread or two that holds them on. That is not good engineering practise. <\/font><\/p>\n \u2018We had an exhaustive review \u2013 which is still ongoing \u2013 looking at all the thread fasteners on the orbiters and we found that the bolts weren\u2019t long enough. That is not where we want to be. So we changed the bolts out on Discovery and Endeavour.<\/font><\/p>\n NASA is evaluating whether they need to change the bolts out on Atlantis at the pad \u2013 allowing her to fly without any engineering being required on the antenna. Any work would have to be undertaken with great care, so as not to damage the nearby payload.<\/font><\/p>\n \u2018On Atlantis the access very difficult, so we are doing more work to see how much risk is involved with changing those bolts out.\u2019<\/font><\/p>\n \u2018I think it\u2019s likely we\u2019ll change those bolts out, but the analysis is still ongoing,\u2019 added Hale.<\/font><\/p>\n \u2018This is a normal day in the life of the Space Shuttle and I expect them to go on over the life of the Shuttle. <\/font><\/p>\n \u2018All in all the team has worked very hard. We have 17,000 people working around the country on the Space Shuttle program and we\u2019re ready to go forward with the completion of a few last items and we aim to be back here on August 27 and hope mother nature will cooperate with us for an on-time launch on Sunday afternoon.\u2019<\/font><\/p>\n Dissenting opinion was still in evidence at the FRR, but as with STS-121\u2019s meeting, this was encouraged, to ensure no stones were left unturned.<\/p>\n \u2018It was an honor to work with this team, a thrill to see another FRR,\u2019 said NASA Administrator Michael Griffin. \u2018It was a great review, and I look forward to a great launch.\u2019 <\/p>\n \u2018The teams have done a great job of getting us here,\u2019 added Associate Administrator for Space Operations Bill Gerstenmaier, who chaired the Flight Readiness Review. \u2018We still have some minor open work in front of us. We look forward to the return to assembly,\u2019 <\/p>\n Update, Saturday evening: KU Bolts have been replaced successfully.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/font> **NASASpaceflight.com Job Opportunities**<\/em><\/font> <\/u><\/p>\n <\/em><\/font><\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Managers at NASA\u2019s Flight Readiness Review (FRR) in Florida have given their final approval for the launch of Shuttle Atlantis to proceed as planned, no sooner than August 27. Atlantis will be carrying the P3\/P4 solar array truss elements to the International Space Station (ISS) \u2013 the first assembly flight post-Columbia disaster \u2013 on a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41974","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41974"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41974"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41974\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/em><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/p>\n
<\/font>\u2018The longest thing we talked about wasn\u2019t the foam,\u2019 said Shuttle manager Wayne Hale. \u2018It was about the famous bolts that were found on the KU antenna. This is a real success story, an example of improving safety on board the Space Shuttle. <\/font><\/p>\n
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<\/em><\/font>LIVE UPDATE PAGES<\/em><\/font><\/p>\n