Last One

Lockheed Martin workers in NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility expect to finish the last of 134 space shuttle external tanks by the end of June before shutting down the production line for the huge aluminum-lithium structures. They have already resettled the tank—designated ET-128-back in the horizontal position after hoisting it upright to splice the liquid oxygen/intertank section to the 96.7-ft. liquid oxygen tank that rides at the bottom of the tank portion of the shuttle stack. The LOX tank that forms the nose of the external tank is 54.6 ft. long, and the intertank structure measures 22.5 ft. Completion of the tank for shipment to Kennedy Space Center is planned for June 29, to support the scheduled September 16 launch of the shuttle Discovery on the final mission of the space shuttle era before the three-orbiter fleet is retired. The government-owned fabrication facility was slated to be used by Boeing to assemble the upper stage of the Ares I crew launch vehicle, but the Obama administration has canceled that program along with the rest of the Constellation Program of post-shuttle vehicles.