Shuttle Discovery's main fuel tank arrived by barge at NASA's Kennedy Space Center on Wednesday afternoon, after leaving its assembly facility in Michoud, La., last Saturday.
NASA officials said at a briefing Tuesday they are looking tentatively at a liftoff of Discovery on May 10, although engineers are continuing to test shuttle components – particularly the foam insulation on Tank ET-119, which remains a concern.
During the briefing, shuttle program manager Wayne Hale reviewed the steps NASA has taken to make the vehicle's orange external fuel tank safe to fly on the next return-to-flight mission. These included eliminating the Protuberance Air Load ramp, where a large piece of foam came loose during Discovery's launch last July.
"The thing that is going to pace getting Discovery off the ground is not work at (Kennedy)," Hale said, "but it is the engineering analysis and tests that go toward proving that this launch vehicle is safe to fly."
Launch director Michael Leinbach said the team at the space center was eager to receive the shuttle's fuel tank. "The two solid rocket boosters are fully mated and are going through closeouts now, so the boosters are going to be ready for the tank after it goes through standalone processing in the Vehicle Assembly Building," he said. "We're just really glad to get another piece of flight hardware here, and we'll be one step closer to launch."
