WIKIARCHIVES.SPACE

Dwarfing the vehicles on the road alongside the crawlerway, Space Shuttle Atlantis rolls back to the Vehicle Assembly Building from Launch Pad 39A via the crawler-transporter underneath the Mobile Launcher Platform. In the VAB workers will conduct inspections, make continuity checks and conduct X-ray analysis on the 36 solid rocket booster cables located inside each booster’s external system tunnel. An extensive evaluation of NASA’s SRB cable inventory revealed conductor damage in four (of about 200) cables on the shelf. Shuttle managers decided to prove the integrity of the system tunnel cables already on Atlantis before launching. The launch has been rescheduled no earlier than Feb. 6.