Discovery back in assembly line

Space shuttle Discovery completed a nearly 10-hour trek back to the hangar on Thursday to have a new and safer fuel tank installed, along with a heater to prevent a dangerous buildup of ice on its surface.

Space shuttle Discovery completed a nearly 10-hour trek back to the hangar on Thursday to have a new and safer fuel tank installed, along with a heater to prevent a dangerous buildup of ice on its surface.

HT Image

The spacecraft is being readied for liftoff in mid-July on the first shuttle flight since the Columbia disaster two-and-a-half-years ago. Discovery was already on the launch pad when NASA concluded that ice that forms on the external tank when it is filled with super-cold fuel could break off during liftoff and prove as lethal as the chunk of foam insulation that doomed Columbia. Discovery was rolled away from the launch pad on a huge caterpillar-track platform, along a specially built road almost as wide as an eight-lane highway.