NASA's Retired Space Shuttle Parts May Be Used Again
Parts from Endeavour and Atlantis could be put to use at the ISS.
— -- What's old may be new again.
NASA is salvaging several water tanks from retired space shuttles Atlantis and Endeavour for possible use in a new water storage system proposal to be implemented at the International Space Station, a space agency official said. Using the existing parts would help reduce the cost of adding the new, more accessible water reserves at the International Space Station.
The water storage system "will be designed to increase the volume of stored, readily accessible potable water on board ISS and significantly reduce crew time involved with maintaining a suitable amount of water reserves," NASA spokesman Dan Huot told ABC News in an email. "Currently, there are adequate water reserves on-board, but reserves are stored in soft goods water bags that require crew time to configure each bag for use."
While the water tanks may be part of the retired shuttles, they still have plenty of design life left in them, Huot said, since each one was designed to support 100 missions. Endeavour flew 25 missions, meaning the tanks have a healthy 75 percent of design life left. Atlantis flew 33 times, so its tanks have 60 to 70 percent worth of use left.
NASA still has to work out design and deployment details and there is no timeline as to when the tanks could potentially head back to space. The space agency said these are the only two instances of hardware being salvaged and said there are "no further plans to remove water tanks from other Space Shuttles (or other hardware.)"