(NASA) – Due to the threat of severe weather posed by Hurricane Ike, NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston will close at 1 p.m. EDT today, suspending all training preparations for mission STS-125.
The closing prompted Space Shuttle Program Manager John Shannon to postpone until sometime next week the STS-125 program-level Flight Readiness Review that had been scheduled for today and Friday.
Image above: With the giant Vehicle Assembly Building in the background, space shuttle Endeavour heads inside where it will be prepared for rollout to the launch pad next week. Image credit: NASA/Troy Cryder
This morning at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, technicians moved space shuttle Endeavour from the Orbiter Processing Facility to the nearby Vehicle Assembly Building where it will be joined to its external tank and twin solid rocket boosters before rolling to Launch Pad 39B next week.
Endeavour is set for launch on its STS-126 mission to the International Space Station in November, but will be on standby at Launch Pad 39B in the unlikely event that a rescue mission for Atlantis would be necessary. Just a few miles away at Launch Pad 39A, workers continue preparing Atlantis for its targeted Oct. 10 launch on the mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope.
Components comprising the payload for space shuttle Atlantis on the STS-125 mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope were displayed for members of the media Wednesday in the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Over 11 days and five spacewalks, astronauts will make repairs and upgrades to the telescope, leaving it better than ever and ready for at least another five years of research.
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