{"id":42134,"date":"2006-03-01T17:02:07","date_gmt":"2006-03-01T09:02:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/et-119-arrives-at-ksc\/"},"modified":"2006-03-01T17:02:07","modified_gmt":"2006-03-01T09:02:07","slug":"et-119-arrives-at-ksc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/et-119-arrives-at-ksc\/","title":{"rendered":"ET-119 arrives at KSC"},"content":{"rendered":"

External Tank (ET-119) has arrived at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC), ahead of a potential launch date in May for Shuttle Discovery on STS-121. <\/p>\n

The modified tank left Building 420, Cell 2 at the Michoud Assembly building (MAF) on Saturday and has been unloaded from its barge, following docking at the Florida spaceport.
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The tank is the first of two required to allow STS-121 to proceed, with ET-118 needed to fly with Atlantis, primarily on STS-115, but also on the STS-300 rescue mission requirement as a precaution, should Discovery suffer serious damage on ascent. <\/p>\n

A number of modifications have been made on the ET, some of which are yet to be certified, pending wind tunnel tests this month. The headline modification has been the removal of the protuberance air load (PAL) ramp \u2013 which shed a one pound chunk of foam during STS-114\u2019s ascent. <\/p>\n

Foam will still shed from the tank during launches, but NASA managers are keen to keep the size of liberations down to that vastly smaller than the briefcase sized chunk, which fatally wounded Columbia on STS-107. \"\"<\/p>\n

\u2018We talk more in terms of mass which turns to kinetic energy than size, (but we\u2019re looking for sizes) smaller than a matchbox which we\u2019d like to stay beneath,\u2019 said Shuttle manager Wayne Hale. <\/p>\n

\u2018It has been our goal to get rid of any foam that might come off in large sizes.\u2019
Further modifications may be made on the ETs during the final 17 flights of the Shuttle program, with the aim to bring down foam shedding to an absolute minimum. <\/p>\n

However, Hale explained that some level of shedding won\u2019t pose a threat to the orbiter\u2019s TPS (thermal protection system), at which levels will have ultimately proven the new modifications to have solved the problem. <\/p>\n

\u2018As you get to small sizes, then clearly we have what we call popcorn, which we\u2019ve seen for years and that clearly does not pose a threat to us,\u2019 he added. <\/p>\n

\u2018So as we get down to the small pieces then we think we\u2019ll of eliminated the threat.\u2019 <\/p>\n

ET-119 will now be placed in the VAB\u2019s checkout cell for further inspections, before being prepared for stacking in-between the two Solid Rocket Boosters (SRBs) which are currently being closed out after assembly.<\/p>\n

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External Tank (ET-119) has arrived at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC), ahead of a potential launch date in May for Shuttle Discovery on STS-121. The modified tank left Building 420, Cell 2 at the Michoud Assembly building (MAF) on Saturday and has been unloaded from its barge, following docking at the Florida spaceport. The tank […]<\/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-42134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42134"}],"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=42134"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42134\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}