The latest item of interest impacted on Discovery out at Pad 39A, as engineers noticed issues with the fasteners on Atlantis’ SSME dome heat shield. Issues were also found on Discovery’s fasteners upon inspections out at the pad and are currently under investigation for corrective work.
“Fasteners on all six SSME dome heat shield splice lines were discovered to be loose. Four of the six locations had soft goods in the load path. Nothing unusual was noted during installation and paper verification indicates torque was initially in spec,” noted the NTD report on the observations made on Atlantis.
“As a result, all of the splice plates will be checked for loss of torque using a dial type torque wrench. The splice line plates will then be removed and replaced taking extra care to not have any of the blanket or soft goods in the load path.”
Atlantis’ tank – ET-138 – continues to be checked out in the VAB’s High Bay 2E (HB-2E), ahead of what will likely be modifications via radius blocks of …
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