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Atlantis to fly with repaired fuel tank around June 8 BY WILLIAM HARWOOD STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS "SPACE PLACE" & USED WITH PERMISSION Posted: April 10, 2007 Launch of the shuttle Atlantis on a hail-delayed flight to the international space station is slipping to no earlier than June 8, officials said today, to give engineers more time to repair damaged foam insulation on the ship's external fuel tank.
"If we continue at this pace of repair, we should be looking at a vehicle rollout to the launch pad perhaps as early as May 6 and launch that would come ... no earlier than June the 8th," said shuttle Program Manager Wayne Hale. "What we're doing, of course, is letting the work drive the schedule instead of the other way around. We are proceeding with a great deal of caution." Hale said NASA hopes to launch the shuttle Endeavour on the next flight in the sequence as early as Aug. 5 and, if no major problems develop, two more flights in October and December. "We sent out the potential manifest to review to all the parts of the shuttle program," Hale said. "We are going to come back Monday afternoon, April 16, and review what people think of that. But I will tell you it depends entirely on when we get done with these ET repairs and launch STS-117. I mean, that's the first part of flying the rest of the flights this year. I would tell you that flying four flights is not outside the realm of possibility, but we want to do this in a safe and orderly manner and we'll just see how it works out." NASA managers had hoped to launch Atlantis on mission STS-117, the first of five planned 2007 shuttle missions, March 15. But during a freak storm that thundered over pad 39A on Feb. 26, the shuttle's external tank was blasted by hail, suffering thousands of pits and gouges in its foam insulation. Wind gusts reached 62 knots and hail up to 1.5 inches in diameter was found at the pad. Atlantis, shielded by moveable weather protection panels, was unscathed. But NASA managers ultimately decided to move the shuttle back to the Vehicle Assembly Building for detailed inspections and, if possible, repairs. As it turned out, most of the damage was restricted to the upper liquid oxygen section of Atlantis's tank. Only a handful of dings were found lower down on the hydrogen section and while two dozen heat shield tiles on the orbiter were scraped by hail that worked its way behind the weather protection panels, detailed inspections show the ship's critical carbon composite wing leading edge panels and nose cap were undamaged. John Honeycutt, deputy manager of the external tank project, said today some 2,664 areas of damage requiring repair have been identified. Two areas, one near the tip of the tank that had between 1,000 and 1,600 hits and the other lower down on the side of the oxygen tank with 200 or so tightly packed impact sites, were so heavily pitted that engineers opted against individual repairs. Instead, the damaged foam will be sanded down and fresh insulation will be sprayed on by tank engineers. About 700 dings and pits will be fixed by boring them out and pouring in fresh foam. Honeycutt said about half of those repairs have been completed to date. The remainder of the damage will be fixed by so-called "sand-and-blend" techniques or simply flying as is.
Today, managers concluded the engineering team has a reasonable chance of completing the repairs and getting Atlantis off around June 8. Hale said recently ordered inspections of the shuttle's main propulsion system fuel lines will be completed under the umbrella of the external tank work. "The repairs as they're tracking today, leading to a rollout about the fifth or sixth of May - and again, that's going to depend on how we do with the repairs - but assuming we get out then, we could not launch within the May window, which closes on May 21," Hale said. "That pushes us into the June 8 window. "If we were to decide today to switch to the new tank (slated for use by Endeavour) we could launch no earlier than June 19. ... We'd like to avoid ... all the effort that's involved in switching tanks. So as long as we're on a good path to repair the hail-damaged tank, we should stay with it." Assuming the repair work goes as planned and the ongoing analysis shows the repairs will, in fact, be safe, liftoff of STS-117 will be targeted for around 7:34 p.m. on June 8. If that schedule holds up, the shuttle would dock with the international space station June 10, spacewalks would be carried out June 11, 13 and 15, with landing on tap the afternoon of June 19. The shuttle Endeavour, which had been scheduled for launch in June, will instead slip to around Aug. 5. Endeavour's crew includes teacher-astronaut Barbara Morgan and Clay Anderson, who will replace station crew member Sunita Williams. Williams was launched to the outpost Dec. 9 aboard the shuttle Discovery and if she remains in space until mid August, she will set a new U.S. single-flight duration record of some 250 days. Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA's chief of manned spaceflight operations, said today NASA is looking at what might be needed to rotate Williams home early aboard Atlantis if the flight faces any additional delays. But barring major problems, he said, she will come home as planned aboard Endeavour. For her part, Williams said today she was not overly concerned about increased exposure to space radiation or any other aspects of a longer-than-planned stay in space. "Well, you know, I've been in constant contact with my flight surgeon and he's keeping me up to date on the concerns we have," she told reporters during a news conference earlier today. "I think eight months is fine from all the indications I've heard, we're at a time right now where we're not getting too much extra radiation from activity on the sun. So I think right now, all indications say that's no problem." Williams' current crewmates - Expedition 14 commander Mike Lopez-Alegria and flight engineer Mikhail Tyurin - are scheduled to return to Earth April 20, along with U.S. space tourist Charles Simonyi, aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft. Lopez-Alegria and Tyurin were launched Sept. 18 and on landing, Lopez-Alegria will set a new U.S. single-flight endurance record of 214 days. Launch dates for downstream shuttle flights are still under discussion and will be assessed during a shuttle/station management review April 16. But a proposed manifest change would move the third flight in the sequence to just after a Russian Soyuz flight in mid October and delay a high-profile flight to launch the European Space Agency's Columbus module to early December. Again, those dates will require agreement by shuttle and station managers. In the meantime, Hale said, Atlantis's crew remains in good spirits. Moving the flight to June 8 means what had been a deep overnight mission will instead be conducted during afternoon and evening hours U.S. time. Here is a summary timeline (in mission elapsed time and EDT). A more detailed flight plan is posted here.
DATE/EDT.......DD...HH...MM...EVENT 06/08/07 Fri 07:34 PM...00...00...00...STS-117 Launch 06/09/07 Sat 01:34 AM...00...06...00...Crew sleep begins Sat 09:34 AM...00...14...00...Crew wakeup (begins flight day 2) Sat 01:59 PM...00...18...25...Heat shield survey begins 06/10/07 Sun 01:34 AM...01...06...00...Crew sleep begins Sun 09:34 AM...01...14...00...STS crew wakeup (FD-3) Sun 04:15 PM...01...20...41...Atlantis docks with space station Sun 06:34 PM...01...23...00...S3/S4 power truss unberthing 06/11/07 Mon 01:34 AM...02...06...00...STS crew sleep begins Mon 09:34 AM...02...14...00...STS crew wakeup (FD-4) Mon 02:09 PM...02...18...35...Power truss bolted in place Mon 03:24 PM...02...19...50...EVA-1: Airlock egress Mon 08:04 PM...03...00...30...Photo-voltaic radiator deploy Mon 09:49 PM...03...02...15...EVA-1: Airlock repressurization 06/12/07 Tue 01:34 AM...03...06...00...STS crew sleep begins Tue 09:34 AM...03...14...00...STS/ISS crew wakeup (FD-5) Tue 01:04 PM...03...17...30...1A mast deploy to 100 percent Tue 02:34 PM...03...19...00...3A mast deploy to 100 percent Tue 04:14 PM...03...20...40...Crew off duty time 06/13/07 Wed 01:34 AM...04...06...00...STS crew sleep begins Wed 09:34 AM...04...14...00...STS crew wakeup (FD-6) Wed 11:19 AM...04...15...45...P6-2B retraction attempt Wed 02:34 PM...04...19...00...EVA-2: Airlock egress Wed 03:14 PM...04...19...40...EVA-2: P6-2B retraction attempt Wed 08:59 PM...05...01...25...EVA-2: Airlock repressurization 06/14/07 Thu 01:04 AM...05...05...30...STS crew sleep begins Thu 09:04 AM...05...13...30...STS crew wakeup (FD-7) Thu 12:04 PM...05...16...30...P6-2B retraction window opens Thu 03:29 PM...05...19...55...P6-2B retraction window closes 06/15/07 Fri 01:04 AM...06...05...30...STS crew sleep begins Fri 09:04 AM...06...13...30...STS crew wakeup (FD-8) Fri 02:04 PM...06...18...30...EVA-3: Airlock egress Fri 08:29 PM...07...00...55...EVA-3: Airlock repressurization 06/16/07 Sat 12:34 AM...07...05...00...STS crew sleep begins Sat 08:34 AM...07...13...00...STS crew wakeup (FD-9) Sat 11:34 AM...07...16...00...Crew off duty time Sat 06:49 PM...07...23...15...Joint crew news conference Sat 07:49 PM...08...00...15...Farewell ceremony Sat 08:04 PM...08...00...30...Egress and hatch closure 06/17/07 Sun 12:04 AM...08...04...30...STS crew sleep begins Sun 08:04 AM...08...12...30...STS crew wakeup (FD-10) Sun 12:12 PM...08...16...38...Atlantis undocks from station Sun 04:14 PM...08...20...40...Heat shield survey begins Sun 10:49 PM...09...03...15...STS crew sleep begins 06/18/07 Mon 07:04 AM...09...11...30...STS crew wakeup (FD-11) Mon 10:34 PM...10...03...00...STS crew sleep begins 06/19/07 Tue 06:34 AM...10...11...00...Crew wakeup (FD-12) Tue 01:41 PM...10...18...07...Deorbit ignition (orbit 171) Tue 02:43 PM...10...19...09...KSC Landing |
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MISSION INDEX |
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This documentary looks back at Apollo 7, the first manned flight of the Apollo program. Apollo 7 was designated as the essential engineering test of the spacecraft before the ambitious lunar missions could be attempted.
NASA astronaut Suni Williams will run the Boston Marathon on a treadmill aboard the International Space Station. To preview the event, Williams, an accomplished marathoner, and Expedition 14 commander Michael Lopez-Alegria talk with The Boston Globe and the
New England Sports Network.
International Space Station Expedition 14 commander Michael Lopez-Alegria and flight engineer Suni Williams give a show-and-tell about the exercise equipment and routines aboard the orbiting complex.
After nearly a year in space, the European Retrievable Carrier (EURECA) satellite was plucked from orbit and stowed aboard Endeavour for return to Earth during STS-57. The June 1993 mission also featured the first flight of the commercial Spacehab module outfitted with a range of microgravity experiments for the crew to use. A spacewalk to demonstrate working on the end of the shuttle robot arm was performed as well.
Working in two shifts around the clock, the astronauts of shuttle mission STS-56 conducted extensive observations of the Earth's atmosphere using the ATLAS 2 payload in the spring of 1993. The SPARTAN Sun-studying satellite was deployed and then retrieved during Discovery's flight too. The crew narrates the highlights in this presentation.
Space shuttle Endeavour lofted another Tracking and Data Relay Satellite into orbit for NASA during a January 1993 mission. An Inertial Upper Stage boosted the craft toward geosynchronous orbit. Other highlights from STS-54 included a mobility-testing spacewalk and an educational project to demonstrate the physics behind toys in space. The crew narrates this post-flight film.
The Laser Geodynamics Satellite (LAGEOS), a small ball-shaped spacecraft designed to help earthquake research by monitoring the movements of the Earth's crustal plates, was launched from space shuttle Columbia in October 1992. The crew of STS-52 narrate the highlights of the mission, which included Canadian and microgravity experiments.
