Dual flow ballet for Endeavour and Atlantis - De-stack debate

Hubble's health problems continue to stay ahead of mission planners. One reload wasn't sufficient, it seems. Now the aging space telescope has gone into Safe Mode, requiring yet another shuffle and re-stack of the Hubble repair mission payload, and with Atlantis and Endeavour on the pad, logistic headaches for KSC personnel.

From NASA SpaceFlight Today: Preliminary milestone schedules have been created for the complex dual processing flows of Atlantis and Endeavour - which will hopefully result in the latter launching in just under six weeks time.

While plans are now solidifying for the short term, evaluations are continuing on whether Atlantis will need to be de-stacked over the New Year.

As previously reported, this weekend will kick-off operations to remove Atlantis’ Hubble servicing payload, before a large quantity of her hypergolics will be offloaded prior to rollback to the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) on either October 19 or 20.

“Will pick up this weekend with payload de-mates. Will get the payload to the canister around October 13. Once that is completed, will go into fuel offload,” noted KSC Ground Operations. “Target is to move STS-125 stack from Pad A to High Bay 3 around October 20.”

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