NASA has finished building a redesigned space shuttle fuel tank that was reconfigured to eliminate the debris problem that doomed the shuttle Columbia and its seven astronauts, agency officials said on Tuesday. Project managers called the step a major step in returning the U.S. space program to manned flight after the shuttles were grounded when Columbia broke apart over Texas on Feb. 1, 2003. The first reconfigured tank is to be shipped by Friday from a NASA facility near New Orleans to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida as the space agency prepares for shuttle Discovery's launch in May or early June. "We are very close. We can taste victory here on shipping the tank," said Sandy Coleman, external tank project manager at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center. The changes are aimed at preventing chunks of insulating foam from breaking off the tank during launch and damaging the shuttle. A suitcase-sized chunk of foam broke off the tank and hit the edge of Columbia's left wing when it was launched on Jan. 16, 2003. The damage went undetected during Columbia's 16-day mission, but caused the spacecraft to break apart under the stress of re-entering the Earth's atmosphere, killing the astronauts. --More 2239 Local Time 1939 GMT
