Space Shuttle Discovery Heads Back to Hangar to Have a New and Safer Fuel Tank Installed

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=793872

Shuttle Discovery in Need of Repairs

Space Shuttle Discovery Heads Back to Hangar to Have a New and Safer
Fuel Tank Installed

The Associated Press
May. 26, 2005 - Space shuttle Discovery began a slow trek back to the
hangar Thursday to have a new and safer fuel tank installed, along
with a heater to prevent a dangerous buildup of ice on its surface.

The spacecraft is being readied for liftoff in mid-July on the first
shuttle flight since the Columbia disaster 2 1/2 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. The journey, at a pace of less than 1
mph, was expected to take six or seven hours.

The rollback of Discovery to the assembly building was postponed by
two days so workers could inspect it for any landing gear cracks of
the sort discovered on space shuttle Atlantis. But no cracks were
found, NASA said.