Photo: Space.com
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - A small bat appears to be trying to hitch a ride aboard the space shuttle Discovery from its perch on the spacecraft's attached external tank as NASA counts down to a planned Sunday evening launch. Mission managers said the tank-clinging fruit bat is unlikely to pose a risk for the shuttle, and will probably fly away when Discovery blasts off this evening at 7:43 p.m. EDT (2343 GMT) from Pad 39A here at NASA's Kennedy Space Center."It's not expected to be a debris problem," NASA spokesman Mike Curie told SPACE.com.
The bat is between one quarter and one third of the way up on the north side of the shuttle's huge orange external fuel tank, which is the side that faces away from the orbiter. It could be seen in a NASA camera view caught by collectSPACE.com, a SPACE.com partner. It was first noticed this morning while the fuel tank was being filled with its super-chilled liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen propellant. NASA does not think the bat has frozen in place, though, because the tank's surface temperature is between 58 and 70 degrees Fahrenheit at the bat's location.
This isn't the first time a bat has taken up position on a shuttle's fuel tank on launch day. "On STS-72 there was a bat, but it flew away during launch," Curie said, referring to the 1996 flight of the shuttle Endeavour. That bat did not harm the shuttle at all. Birds and bats can pose a hazard to space shuttles if they impact and damage an orbiter's sensitive heat shield tiling. This thermal coating protects the shuttle from burning up in Earth's atmosphere when it re-enters.
Source: Space.com
