Music.
How do we prepare the orbiter for space flight? We do that at Kennedy Space Center in one of our three
Orbiter Processing Facilities, or OPFs. The orbiter is just one of the components of the Space Shuttle
vehicle, although sometimes people refer to the orbiter as the Space Shuttle itself.
To us, the Space Shuttle vehicle is the twin Solid Rocket Boosters (the white things), the large, orange
External Tank and then the white, winged orbiter that just hangs off of the External Tank.
To prepare the orbiter for flight after it lands from a previous mission, we send it to one of our three
hangars that we have here, known as the Orbiter Processing Facilities, or OPFs. We'll spend a lot of months
inside the OPF doing all the preparation work for all the engineers, technicians and inspectors to get in
and do all the things that we need to do, do those preps.
Finally, usually about a month and a half before we go out to the launch pad, we roll the orbiter out of
the Orbiter Processing Facility, take it over to the Vehicle Assembly Building where the stacked Solid
Rocket Boosters and the External Tank have already been mated. We then lift the orbiter way up high, after
we get it vertical, and then we attach it to the External Tank in three locations with explosive bolts.
We spend about one week inside the Vehicle Assembly Building, do all the final prep work there, and then we
finally roll out to the launch pad, where we'll spend about a month doing all the final preps there, getting ready for flight.
At T-0, as you know, the main engines -- those are located on the back of the orbiter -- those will ignite
and send the whole Space Shuttle vehicle up into space.
And that's how we prepare the orbiter for flight.
Music.