PLANT 42 GEARS UP FOR SHUTTLE JOB; ATLANTIS TO ARRIVE FOR MODIFICATIONS, UPGRADE.

Byline: Charles F. Bostwick and Jim Skeen / Daily News Staff Writers

If all goes well, space shuttle Atlantis will arrive Tuesday for the most extensive modifications on any orbiter since the last rolled out of the U.S. Air Force Plant 42 assembly bay 6-1/2 years ago.

The 12-year-old spacecraft will get ``glass cockpit'' touchscreen electronic display panels to replace its '70s-era video screens and mechanical gauges, and a modern GPS navigation system, using signals from orbiting satellites - which the shuttle fleet helped launch - to tell where it is in space.

``The shuttle's getting hip,'' joked Boeing spokesman Alan Buis.

Some 350 workers - about 50 more than needed for Endeavour, the last orbiter in for modifications in Palmdale - will disassemble, inspect, replace parts and modernize Atlantis over the next nine months. Boeing is still hiring the last of the workers, Buis said.

The amount NASA will pay for the work has not been established, but Buis said the contract is expected to be ``significantly higher'' than the $41 million spent on Endeavour because of the greater amount of work to be done.

Work on Atlantis will include 50 major modifications, including installing the new navigation equipment and cockpit instruments, adding a storage module for parts that will be used in the construction of the international space station and replacing a docking device designed to fit the Russian Mir space station with one for the international space station.

``This is the most extensive set of modifications we've ever performed on an orbiter,'' Buis said.

Work on Atlantis will be done by Boeing as a subcontractor to United Space Alliance, a company formed by Boeing and Lockheed Martin to manage space shuttle operations. The work will be done at Boeing's shuttle hangar at Air Force Plant 42, the same hangar where all of the orbiters were built.

The work will also include a preflight checkout, work normally done at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. That is expected to cut one or two months off the time needed to get the spacecraft ready for its next flight.

Like previous shuttles brought in for modifications and inspections, Atlantis will arrive at Plant 42 atop a NASA 747 jumbo jet, then be lifted off by a giant gantry before it is rolled into the assembly hangar.

Atlantis and its 747 are expected to arrive over Palmdale sometime late Tuesday afternoon, if bad weather any place between Florida and California doesn't delay the flight.

(different ending ran in Conejo edition)

The craft are scheduled to leave Kennedy Space Center at dawn Tuesday, which would put them in Palmdale sometime between 3 and 5 p.m., weather permitting, Buis said.

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Photo

PHOTO (color--ran in AV edition only) The space shuttle Atlantis is slated to arrive in the area Tuesday for a series of extensive modifications at Air Force Plant 42.

Daily News file photo