spacetoday.net: Shuttle rolled back to VAB

Posted: Wed, Dec 22, 2010, 11:02 AM ET (1602 GMT)
STS-133: Discovery rollback to VAB (NASA/KSC)

NASA moved the space shuttle Discovery back to the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) in the early morning hours Wednesday to perform additional tests on its external tank. Discovery left pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center at approximately 10:50 pm EST Tuesday (0350 GMT Wednesday), arriving back inside the VAB about eight hours later. The rollback had been planned for early Tuesday but was postponed because of a technical problem with the crawler used to transport the shuttle. Discovery will remain in the VAB until about mid-January to allow technicians to perform additional x-rays and other examinations of its external tank in an effort to understand why two aluminum brackets in the tank cracked. Discovery is now slated to launch on mission STS-133 no earlier than February 3.