Hurricanes delay shuttle launch
NASA Administrator Michael Griffin says Gulf Coast hurricanes will delay the next space shuttle launch until May -- putting it two months behind schedule.
Griffin, speaking Wednesday during a meeting of the Washington Post's editorial and news staffs, credited "heroic" efforts by NASA workers at Mississippi's Stennis Space Center and the Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans for preventing serious damage from Hurricane Katrina.
Stennis, which tests shuttle main engines, reopened last week. Michoud, which builds the shuttle's external fuel tanks, is to resume full operation next week.
Griffin said the space shuttle might never have flown again except for the efforts of a 37-member "hold-down" team that remained at Michoud to keep generators and pumps running during Katrina.
"They kept the diesels running, which kept the pumps running," Griffin told the Post. "You fly over it and you can see Michoud is an island of green grass in a sea of mud. The eye (of Katrina) passed right over it."
He said NASA planned to fly the shuttle 18 times by 2010, using it to complete the assembly of the International Space Station and the refurbishing of the Hubble Space Telescope.
Copyright 2005 by United Press International
