Thu, Aug 07, 2008 Will Be In Place For Possible Rescue Mission A
vital -- and, hopefully, unnecessary -- component for the
upcoming space shuttle mission to service the Hubble Space
Telescope will soon be in place. Lockheed Martin delivered Space
Shuttle External Tank-129 to NASA Wednesday, shipping the
15-story tank from the Michoud Assembly Facility via enclosed
barge at about 5 pm Wednesday evening, bound for Kennedy Space
Center (KSC). ET-129 will be in place and will serve, if needed,
as part of the rescue mission to support the Hubble Space
Telescope launch currently scheduled October 8. Otherwise,
ET-129 is currently slated to fly with Orbiter Endeavour on the
next International Space Station mission on November 10. Less
than one month ago, Lockheed Martin delivered another tank,
ET-127, which will serve as the flight tank for the Hubble
mission with Space Shuttle Atlantis. That tank was in place in
time to meet NASA's original schedule for the Hubble mission,
which called for liftoff on August 28... b