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Crew boards shuttle for countdown rehearsal BY JUSTIN RAY SPACEFLIGHT NOW Posted: June 15, 2006
The Terminal Countdown Demonstration Test, or TCDT, is a routine pre-flight event for all shuttle crews to rehearse launch day procedures and practice escaping their craft if a problem strikes while still on the pad. Dressed in day-glow orange partial pressure suits, commander Steve Lindsey, pilot Mark Kelly, mission specialists Mike Fossum, Lisa Nowak, Stephanie Wilson, Piers Sellers and station Expedition flight engineer Thomas Reiter departed the Kennedy Space Center crew quarters around 7:45 a.m. EDT for the half-hour ride to the pad. One by one, the astronauts crawled through Discovery's port-side hatch and took their assigned seats in the shuttle's two-level crew module. Lindsey, Kelly, Fossum and Nowak were seated in the cockpit while Wilson, Sellers and Reiter occupied the middeck. Meanwhile, the shuttle launch team stationed in the Firing Room about four miles away were running through countdown scripts. The TCDT serves as a full-up launch day dress rehearsal for the team and astronauts alike, albeit without actually pumping fuel into Discovery or even retracting the service gantry enclosing the orbiter on the pad. Countdown clocks targeted a simulated launch time of 11 a.m. EDT. But as Discovery's three main engines pretended to ignite at T-minus 6 seconds, a fault was detected that forced the powerplants to shut down moments before liftoff. Such an aborted takeoff has happened for real five times in shuttle program history. Still wearing their cumbersome spacesuits, the crew exited the shuttle and scurried to the emergency slide-wire baskets on the west side of the launch pad tower. These baskets would be used to quickly transport a shuttle crew to the ground where a fortified bunker awaits if a nightmarish scenario ever occurred. Discovery's crew planned to hop into the baskets but not actually ride them off the tower. In fact, astronauts have never had to escape the pad in such dramatic fashion. The five-man, two-woman crew will wrap up their KSC visit on Friday and return to the Johnson Space Center in Houston for final pre-flight preparations. Before their departure, Lindsey is scheduled to visit with reporters around 10:30 a.m. to give a recap of the TCDT experience.
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The Boeing Delta 4 rocket launches from pad 37B at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station with the GOES-N spacecraft, beginning a new era in weather observing for the Americas.
As night fell over Kennedy Space Center on May 19, space shuttle Discovery reached launch pad 39B to complete the slow journey from the Vehicle Assembly Building. Discovery will be traveling much faster in a few weeks when it blasts off to the International Space Station.
Perched atop a trailer-like transporter, space shuttle Discovery was moved May 12 from its hangar to the 52-story Vehicle Assembly Building for mating to its external fuel tank and twin solid rocket boosters in preparation for the STS-121 mission.
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