Work Will Not Affect Launch Schedule

It's something that's never been done before: repairing a component mounted inside the main payload bay of the space shuttle... as the orbiter sits pointing to the stars on the launch pad. Yet that is precisely what workers at Kennedy Space Center are doing this weekend... in order to swap some potentially suspect bolts holding a major communications antenna in place.

NASA shuttle manager Wayne Hale gave Florida Today an extremely descriptive account of the potentially dangerous repair job, to be conducted from a work platform and scaffolding nearly six stories above the floor of the payload bay. The job calls for a technician to lie on his side on a skinny gangplank extending through an airlock, and stretch out to reach the bolts holding the antenna in place.

"So imagine operating on a surfboard that's tied down at one end, sticking out over a six-story balcony," said Hale. "I mean, this has got all kinds of implications."

In addition to the potential for injury, the risky repair could also lead to accidental damage to the orbiter -- or its $372 million payload, a central truss segment bound for the International Space Station.

But the alternative could be far worse.

As Aero-News reported last week, engineers are worried two of the four bolts holding the antenna in place may not be threaded properly. Without any way of knowing for certain if the bolts are secure, NASA senior engineers decided the repair was worth the risk -- as failure of the bolts could lead the shuttle's 304-pound antenna to plunge through the bay during launch, possibly resulting in catastrophic damage.

"You have to be basically as conservative as you can, and make the assumption that the bolts are not engaged at all," said Kyle Herring, a spokesman for NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. "And when you factor that into the analysis, it makes more sense to go ahead and change the bolts."

If all goes to schedule, the work to replace the bolts should be wrapped up by late Sunday night -- allowing the countdown for Atlantis' scheduled August 27 launch to remain unaffected.

FMI: www.nasa.gov