Spaceflight Now




NewsAlert



Sign up for our NewsAlert service and have the latest news in astronomy and space e-mailed direct to your desktop.

Enter your e-mail address:

Privacy note: your e-mail address will not be used for any other purpose.



Foam loss grounds shuttle fleet again
BY WILLIAM HARWOOD
STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS "SPACE PLACE" & USED WITH PERMISSION
Posted: July 27, 2005

In a major setback for NASA, senior managers today grounded the shuttle fleet, saying no more missions will be launched until engineers figure out why large, potentially catastrophic pieces of foam insulation broke away from the shuttle Discovery's external fuel tank during launch Tuesday.


A piece of the PAL ramp foam fell off the external tank, as detected in this post-launch photo from Discovery. Credit: NASA
 
"Until we're ready, we won't go fly again," said shuttle program manager Bill Parsons. "I don't know when that might be, I'll state that up front. We're just in the beginning of this process of understanding. This is a test flight. This is a flight we had to go off and try to get as much information as we could and see if the changes that we had made to the tank (in the wake of the Columbia disaster) were sufficient. Obviously, we have some more work to do.

"I don't know if that's a month, I don't know if that's three months. We've got a lot of work in front of us to go figure that out."

See pictures of the tank here.

The unexpected problem, coming on the heels of what had appeared to be a triumphant return to space for Discovery and its crew, put a planned September flight by the shuttle Atlantis in clear doubt and raised the possibility of an extended hiatus that would put additional strain on the international space station and along with it, the nation's confidence in NASA.

The largest pieces of foam did not strike Discovery and engineers believe the ship's seven-member crew will be able to safely return to Earth Aug. 7 after a long-awaited mission to deliver supplies and equipment to the space station. If all goes well, commander Eileen Collins will guide Discovery to a linkup with the unfinished $30 billion outpost early Thursday.

But the foam problem took the luster off an otherwise successful mission, and for good reason. Deputy shuttle program manager Wayne Hale said if the largest piece of debris had fallen off earlier, while Discovery was still in the lower reaches of the atmosphere, "we think this would have been really bad. So it's not acceptable, OK?"

Discovery blasted off from the Kennedy Space Center at 10:39 a.m. Tuesday, two-and-a-half years after Columbia disintegrated during re-entry. The disaster was caused by damage to the ship's left wing that resulted from the impact of external tank foam insulation during launch 16 days earlier.

NASA's top priority in the wake of the accident - and the No. 1 recommendation of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board - was to redesign the way the foam is applied to the tank to minimize so-called foam shedding. Engineers were confident Discovery's tank would shed nothing larger than a marshmallow, repeatedly stating their belief that the new tanks were the safest ever built.

But during Discovery's climb to space, a few seconds after the ship's solid-fuel boosters separated two minutes and five seconds into flight, a relatively large, pillow-size piece of foam ripped away from an aerodynamic ramp intended to prevent turbulent airflow around cable trays and pressurization lines.

A new camera mounted on the external tank to monitor the tank's performance showed the debris lifting off and quickly tumbling away in the thin, supersonic airflow. Earlier, part of a heat shield tile near the nose landing gear door cracked off and fell away. That incident is still under study, but it appears relatively minor.

The tank debris passed under the shuttle's right wing and did not appear to come close to actually striking the orbiter. But the size of the yard-long piece of debris was a shock.

In addition, camera footage shot by Discovery's crew after the tank was jettisoned showed two other relatively large divots in the foam near the area where two struts held the shuttle's nose to the tank.

"We saw a couple of divots in areas that frankly are not satisfactory to us," Hale said. "We spent a lot of time working on what we call the liquid hydrogen interface ring, the LH2 interface, to make sure we would not loose pieces of foam and in fact, we see about a six- or seven-inch piece of foam that came off right there at that interface, which is unsatisfactory and we've got to work on that."

In the aftermath of Columbia, engineers discussed the possibility of eliminating the so-called protuberance air load - PAL - ramp, a long, hand-applied foam dam used to improve the tank's aerodynamics. Here is a description from NASA's STS-114 press kit:

Source: NASA

The top-to-bottom assessment of the External Tank's Thermal Protection System led to re-evaluation of other areas in which foam insulation is prone to loss. One of those was the existing design of the Protuberance Air Load (PAL) ramps designed to prevent unsteady air flow underneath the tank's cable trays and pressurization lines.

Two PAL ramps exist on each External Tank. One is near the top of the liquid oxygen tank, close to the nose cone, while the other is below the intertank, near the top of the liquid hydrogen tank. They consist of thick, manually sprayed layers of foam, which could provide a source of debris.

The forward 10 feet of the LH2 PAL ramp was removed and replaced to allow access to the LH2 intertank flange area to implement foam closeout improvements. An extensive evaluation that included careful dissections to collect data on existing PAL ramps determined location, size and frequency of any voids which are known to promote foam separation due to expansion of trapped air or gases during ascent.

Over the course of six months, seven enhancement sprays were performed on high-fidelity mockups to develop a new spray process, which proved through non-destructive evaluation that not only were fewer voids formed, but those that did form fell into the acceptable range for flight safety.

After comparing all of the data gathered and analyses performed, it was decided that the first two tanks PAL ramps are safe to fly using the current application process with detailed scrutiny of evaluation applied. An enhanced spray process is in work for future tanks, as well as continued work in developing redesign options including elimination of the ramps; reducing the ramps' sizes by two thirds; or building a trailing edge "fence" on the back side of the cable tray, which would act like a nozzle throat and prevent unsteady flow in that area.

"Our expectations when we went into this flight that we wouldn't have an unexpected debris event," Parsons said. "The program throughout the last two and a half years, we reviewed many areas on this tank and ways we can improve that. The PAL ramp was one of those areas we reviewed, whether we should make modifications to that or whether we had enough technical data that we felt it was OK to fly as is.

"There were some concerns about this ramp, that is a large piece of foam. So the community was very diligent about looking at this. We did realize that eventually one day we needed to put together a program to remove this PAL ramp if at all possible. But at the time, we didn't have enough data where we could technically do that and be safe.

"In the end, we had enough data to show we had had very few problems with the PAL ramp and we decided it was safe to fly as is. Obviously, with the event that we've had, we were wrong. ... We did not expect the PAL ramp to have the issue that it had, but it did."

Parsons said it likely will take engineers a fair amount of time to understand what caused the foam to separate and to come up with a fix.

"This is a test flight," he said. "We went off to take a good look at this vehicle and see how it would perform. And unfortunately, it didn't perform as well as we'd like it to perform. I can't say what the impact of this is until we get some good evaluation of this and try to understand what caused this to happen.

"We are going to go through and do a thorough evaluation and then we'll determine when it's safe to fly. Obviously, we can't fly with PAL ramps the size of this ramp coming off the way it did. I mean, obviously, we have to go fix this."

While the shuttle fleet will remain grounded while engineers troubleshoot the latest problem, Parsons said the nation should not lose confidence in NASA or the space shuttle.

"We think this vehicle is safe," Parsons said. "We think we can fly this vehicle and we think we can make this vehicle safe for the next flight. We feel very, very confident in our ability to make this vehicle safe."

Spaceflight Now Plus
Additional coverage for subscribers:
VIDEO: NASA GROUNDS SHUTTLE PROGRAM PLAY
AUDIO: LISTEN TO PROGRAM NEWS CONFERENCE FOR IPOD
VIDEO: WEDNESDAY MISSION STATUS BRIEFING DIAL-UP | BROADBAND
VIDEO: SHUTTLE FUEL TANK HITS BIRD AT LIFTOFF PLAY

VIDEO: AMAZING WB-57 AERIAL LAUNCH VIDEO NORTH | SOUTH PLANE
VIDEO: OFFICIALS DESCRIBE DEBRIS EVENTS PLAY
AUDIO: LISTEN TO THE DEBRIS DESCRIPTION FOR IPOD

VIDEO: LAUNCH OF DISCOVERY! SHORTER | LONGER
VIDEO: FOOTAGE OF OBJECT BREAKING FREE FROM TANK PLAY
VIDEO: TANK-MOUNTED CAMERA SHOWS ENTIRE LAUNCH SMALL | LARGE
VIDEO: ONBOARD CAMERA VIEW OF TANK SEPARATION PLAY
VIDEO: LIFTOFF AS SEEN FROM PAD WATER TOWER PLAY
VIDEO: SIDE VIEW OF DISCOVERY'S LIFTOFF PLAY
VIDEO: BEAUTIFUL LAUNCH FOOTAGE FROM PAD'S FRONT SIDE PLAY
VIDEO: TRACKING CAMERA LOCATED ON BEACH MOUND PLAY
VIDEO: LAUNCH MOVIE FROM THE PRESS SITE PLAY
VIDEO: POST-LAUNCH NEWS CONFERENCE PLAY

VIDEO: COMMANDER COLLINS BOARDS DISCOVERY PLAY
VIDEO: PILOT KELLY CLIMBS INTO HIS SEAT PLAY
VIDEO: MISSION SPECIALIST NOGUCHI BOARDS PLAY
VIDEO: MISSION SPECIALIST ROBINSON BOARDS PLAY
VIDEO: MISSION SPECIALIST THOMAS BOARDS PLAY
VIDEO: MISSION SPECIALIST LAWRENCE BOARDS PLAY
VIDEO: MISSION SPECIALIST CAMARDA BOARDS PLAY
VIDEO: CREW ARRIVES AT LAUNCH PAD 39B PLAY
VIDEO: ASTRONAUTS DEPART QUARTERS FOR PAD PLAY
VIDEO: CREW DONS LAUNCH SPACESUITS PART 1 | PART 2
VIDEO: ASTRONAUTS GATHER FOR PRE-LAUNCH SNACK PLAY

VIDEO: PAD'S ROTATING SERVICE STRUCTURE ROLLED BACK PLAY
VIDEO: TIME LAPSE MOVIE OF SERVICE STRUCTURE ROLLBACK PLAY
MORE: SHUTTLE RETURN TO FLIGHT VIDEO LISTING

SUBSCRIBE NOW

Status Summary

See the Status Center for full play-by-play coverage.


MISSION INDEX