CAPE CANAVERAL - NASA next
week will try to free a knob stuck between the dashboard and a cockpit window
on shuttle Atlantis - a problem that some fear could trigger lengthy launch
delays or even an early retirement for the orbiter.
But NASA shuttle program
officials effectively are saying, "Not so fast."
"I think it's too
early to know whether it's a big deal or not," said Kyle Herring, a
spokesman for NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.
A notched rotary knob from
a lighting bracket somehow got wedged between the orbiter's cockpit instrument
panel and one of six forward windows during NASA's fifth and final
Hubble Space Telescope mission in May. The knob is designed to mount a work
light to a bracket.
Somehow, it floated into a
recess in the corner of the cockpit, and two edges of one of its
crescent-shaped notches are pressing against the inside of the triple-pane
window, which is a little more than 2 1/2 inches thick.
clipped from: www.space.com