{"id":42387,"date":"2005-05-19T21:16:28","date_gmt":"2005-05-19T13:16:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/unknown-incident-noted-with-et-121\/"},"modified":"2005-05-19T21:16:28","modified_gmt":"2005-05-19T13:16:28","slug":"unknown-incident-noted-with-et-121","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/unknown-incident-noted-with-et-121\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Unknown\u2019 incident noted with ET-121"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two United Space Alliance sources have noted an incident that occurred with the External Tank that will fly with Shuttle Discovery on STS-114.
\n <\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

The incident \u2013 with no word on the seriousness, and\/or affect on the already-tight Return to Flight timeline \u2013 happened in the Vehicle Assembly Building on Thursday.<\/font><\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Both sources have confirmed that the unknown incident happened prior to \u201csling hook up\u201d \u2013 and caused concern among workers preparing for the stacking to its two Solid Rocket Boosters. <\/font><\/p>\n

The incident was said to have caused a \u201csmall ding\u201d on the ET and the decision was to go ahead with stacking and then have a look at \u201cdamage\u201d.<\/font><\/p>\n

ET-121 was set to feed Atlantis\u2019 three main engines on her mission (STS-121) \u2013 but will now provide the propellant for her sistership Discovery following the decision to de-mate the STS-114 stack.<\/font><\/p>\n

The ET that Discovery is currently mated with will be sent back to its manufactures \u2013  NASA\u2019s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans \u2013 for heater modifications and check-out on potential issues that arose during the first Tanking Test last month.<\/font><\/p>\n

Insight into those issues may be more forthcoming on Friday, when a second Tanking Test will occurring \u2013 starting at 8am UK time and lasting for around 12 hours.<\/font><\/p>\n

Following the test, Discovery will be rolled back into the VAB, de-stacked from her SRBs and ET-120, raised and stacked with ET-121 and its set of SRBs, with the process hopefully completed within the next two weeks.  <\/font><\/p>\n

Discovery\u2019s three auxiliary power units (APUs) will be tested on May 23 before the Shuttle is rolled-back to the VAB the following day. June 14 is targetted for when Discovery will once again roll back to pad 39B. However, today\u2019s incident involving ET-121 may affect that timeline.<\/font><\/p>\n

It had already been noted that even with USA engineers working everyday on Return to Flight, the soonest Discovery could feasibly launch would be July 18. STS-114 has until the end of July to launch, or see her mission delayed until the next available window \u2013 in September.<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two United Space Alliance sources have noted an incident that occurred with the External Tank that will fly with Shuttle Discovery on STS-114. The incident \u2013 with no word on the seriousness, and\/or affect on the already-tight Return to Flight timeline \u2013 happened in the Vehicle Assembly Building on Thursday. Both sources have confirmed that the […]<\/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-42387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42387"}],"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=42387"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42387\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}