The crew of the shuttle Atlantis reviewed launch pad emergency procedures today and in a brief question-and-answer session with reporters, described their upcoming station assembly flight as one of the most complex missions yet attempted.

Credit: NASA-KSC

But commander Brent Jett said that level of complexity will be the rule, not the exception, on all upcoming flights as NASA attempts to finish the international space station before the shuttle is retired in 2010.

"Every crew likes to say boy, this is one of the most complex missions we've every flown," Jett said at the base of launch pad 39B. "They're all that way. And they'll all be that way until we stop flying in 2010."

Jett, pilot Chris Ferguson, flight engineer Dan Burbank, Joe Tanner, Steve MacLean and Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper arrived at the Kennedy Space Center Monday to review emergency procedures and to participate in a full-up dress-rehearsal countdown Thursday.

NASA managers will meet next week for a formal flight readiness review to clear Atlantis for launch. The launch window opens at 4:30 p.m. Aug. 27 and closes Sept. 7.


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The goal of the 116th shuttle mission is to attach a huge set of solar arrays to the left side of the space station's main truss along with a complex rotary joint that will enable the panels to track the sun to maximize electrical output. Three spacewalks by Tanner, Piper, Burbank and MacLean, working in two-person teams, will be needed to hook up, activate and check out the new equipment.

The station ultimately will feature four sets of arrays, two on each end of the main truss. A set of arrays currently mounted to a truss atop the station's multi-hatch Unity module will be repositioned late next summer beside the arrays going up aboard Atlantis.

Atlantis' flight represents a major milestone for NASA, the resumption of space station assembly three years after the Columbia disaster. Assuming the shuttle's external tank doesn't shed any major pieces of foam insulation, NASA is expected to resume night launchings in December when Discovery is scheduled to return to the station.

"Every crew and every mission control team has to be on their game when we fly these assembly missions," Jett said. "We've got to do them right. We can handle some setbacks, we can deal with some problems, but we have to perform these missions well and we have only a limited amount of time to do it. They're all important, we treat them all as very important missions.

"If we do our jobs right, we'll get to 2010 and we'll retire the shuttle safely, we'll see it come to a wheels stopped not too far from here and we'll have a complete station. That's what we're really all looking forward to."

As for the sheer complexity of the assembly tasks, "I think all the missions between now and 2010 that involve station assembly are going to be extremely complex," Jett said. "You could probably make the case that each one is slightly more complex than the one that precedes it. We're flying hardware that has no history in space."

The rotary joints that ultimately will let the station's arrays rotate to track the sun have been tested on the ground but "we don't have any history with them on orbit," Jett said. "So those represent a special challenge in terms of both engineering and operations."

"I think the most challenging thing for us on this flight is going to be our timeline," Jett said. "We've put together a very aggressive first five or six days of the flight, we did that deliberately. It's probably the most aggressive timeline that's been flown on the shuttle ever.

"We think we're ready for it. We've been in training for four-and-a-half years and we have some options if we get a little bit behind where we can relax that timeline. But that's going to be the most challenging part for us, getting the solar arrays deployed on flight day six."

The astronauts, flight directors and mission managers will participate in a full day of background briefings and interviews Friday at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. A detailed mission preview will be posted here as soon as possible thereafter.

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