History > 2006 > USA > Space (II)

STS121-S-024 (4 July 2006) ---

Space Shuttle Discovery and its seven-member crew launched at 2:38 p.m. (EDT)

to begin the two-day journey to the International Space Station on the historic Return to Flight STS-121 mission.

Discovery is slated to dock with the station at 10:52 a.m. (EDT) Thursday July 6, 2006.

The launch made history as it was the first human-occupying spacecraft to launch on Independence Day.

During the 12-day mission, the STS-121 crew of seven will test new equipment and procedures to improve shuttle safety,

as well as deliver supplies and make repairs to the space station.

STS-121 Shuttle Mission Imagery        NASA

http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/images/shuttle/sts-121/html/sts121-s-024.html

NASA Makes Two Sets of Plans for Shuttle

August 28, 2006
The New York Times
By WARREN E. LEARY

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., Aug. 27 — Space shuttle ground crews made preparations on Sunday for a Tuesday launching while also planning to roll the Atlantis back into its hangar to ride out an approaching tropical storm.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration managers will meet again on Monday morning before making a decision.

NASA had kept alive the possibility of sending Atlantis and its crew of six on a critical construction mission for the International Space Station. But as Tropical Storm Ernesto veered toward the western Florida coast, pushing winds and clouds ahead of it that would affect the east coast of the state and the Kennedy Space Center by midweek, workers started battening down rocket launching facilities.

“We really haven’t lost our minds,” William H. Gerstenmaier, NASA’s associate administrator for space flight, said of the competing activities.

NASA wants to resume space station construction to try out new safety modifications and procedures, after making only two shuttle test flights since the 2003 Columbia disaster. The agency wants to fly three times before the end of the year to maintain a schedule to finish the station before the shuttle fleet retires in 2010.

“We have two competing objectives,” Mr. Gerstenmaier said at a news conference. “One, we want to get the vehicle ready to fly. The other objective is we want to get the vehicle ready to roll back. They are not compatible. At some point in the sequence you have to give up one or the other.”

On Saturday, NASA postponed the planned Sunday launching of Atlantis by one day to examine the effects of a large lightning strike on the launching pad in a storm on Friday.

The shuttle was not hit, but engineers were concerned about potential damage from a surge of electricity around the shuttle and associated ground equipment.

On Sunday, managers pushed the next chance for a launching to Tuesday at 3:42 p.m. to give them more time to assess what impact the lightning might have had, if any.

Mr. Gerstenmaier said that the shuttle and its external tank had essentially been cleared for flight, but that engineers were still looking at data to see if explosive bolts connected to the craft’s large booster rocket might have been affected by a surge of current.

If managers decide to move the shuttle back to the hangar, technicians will first have to drain onboard oxygen and hydrogen supplies that power the vehicle’s fuel cells and make other critical preparations. The entire rollback process from the launching pad to the hangar takes about 48 hours, officials said.

On its 11-day mission to the space station, Atlantis is to deliver a truss segment and a new solar power array, a complex assembly task requiring three spacewalks to complete.

    NASA Makes Two Sets of Plans for Shuttle, NYT, 28.8.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/28/science/space/28shuttle.html

James A. Van Allen,

Discoverer of Earth-Circling Radiation Belts,

Is Dead at 91

August 10, 2006
The New York Times
By WALTER SULLIVAN

James A. Van Allen, the physicist who made the first major scientific discovery of the early space age, the Earth-circling radiation belts that bear his name, and sent spacecraft instruments to observe the outer reaches of the solar system, died yesterday in Iowa City. He was 91.

The cause was heart failure, family members said. Dr. Van Allen was a longtime professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Iowa, and, with the discovery of the Van Allen belts of intense radiation surrounding Earth, he became a leading figure in the new field of magnetospheric physics, which grew in importance as spacecraft began exploring the planets.

A legendary lecturer and an inspiration to several generations of budding physicists and astronomers, Dr. Van Allen continued to show up at his office-laboratory until a month or so before he died.

Rapid Rise to Acclaim

James Van Allen, an unassuming but resolute investigator of cosmic rays and other space phenomena, literally rocketed to international acclaim with the launching of Explorer 1, the first successful space satellite of the United States.

It was on Jan. 31, 1958, in the early days of the space race between the United States and the Soviet Union and almost four months after the Russians stunned Americans with Sputnik 1. The American Explorer 1 may not have been first in space, but a Geiger counter developed by Dr. Van Allen sent back data of what would become known as the Van Allen radiation belts.

The radiation detector recorded two belts of charged particles trapped by Earth’s magnetic field. One belt is 400 to 4,000 miles above the surface, and the other is 9,000 to 15,000 miles above the Equator, curving toward the magnetic poles. Further evidence for the encircling radiation was detected with Dr. Van Allen’s instruments carried aloft aboard Explorer 2 and Explorer 3.

In the celebration of the Explorer 1 success, Dr. Van Allen posed for what became an iconic picture of the early days of spaceflight. He is standing with Wernher von Braun, whose team built the rocket, and William H. Pickering, who directed the spacecraft development, all smiling broadly and holding a model of the spacecraft high over their heads. He was the last of the three to die.

For several decades afterward, Dr. Van Allen was a staunch advocate of planetary exploration with robotic spacecraft and a critic of big-budget programs for human space flight. Describing himself as “a member of the loyal opposition,” he argued that space science could be done better and less expensively when left to remote-controlled vehicles.

Even before the radiation-belt discovery, Dr. Van Allen was heavily involved in early American rocket research. When, on April 16, 1945, a V-2 rocket captured from the Germans was first sent aloft from the White Sands Proving Ground in New Mexico, it carried Geiger counters provided by Dr. Van Allen. His goal was to record radiation from space before it was altered by passage through the atmosphere. Such “cosmic rays” had been his lifelong interest, and it had earlier been discovered that they were more intense in outer space.

It has been said that scientists fall into three categories, thinkers, organizers and doers. Dr. Van Allen was a doer.

He was born on Sept. 7, 1914, in Mount Pleasant, Iowa. A physics professor at Iowa Wesleyan College, near his hometown, recognized the 18-year-old student’s skill at tinkering. The professor put him to work, at 35 cents an hour, preparing seismic and magnetic equipment for an expedition to Antarctica.

It was to be led by Adm. Richard E. Byrd with the physics professor, Dr. Thomas Poulter, as second in command. Mr. Van Allen wanted to go, but his family thought him too young. He graduated summa cum laude and went to the State University in Iowa City for his graduate work, receiving a doctorate in 1939.

He worked as a research fellow at the Carnegie Institution of Washington until 1942. He then joined the Navy and worked at the Bureau of Ordnance on the proximity fuse, which was, for the first time, effective against dive bombers. Its strictly kept secret was a tiny radar in the projectile’s nose that detonated when it flew past a target. He also served as an assistant staff gunnery officer in the Pacific, winning four combat stars.

At the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, from 1946 through 1950, he supervised high-altitude research, promoting development of the Aerobee rocket, which while much smaller and cheaper than the V-2, could lift a small payload almost as high.

In 1951, he joined the University of Iowa as a professor and head of the department of physics and astronomy. He and his graduate students developed the “rockoon,” a rocket lifted by balloon 10 to 15 miles high, where air pressure was low, then fired to soar as high as 85 miles. From icebreakers he supervised rocket shots near both the north and south geomagnetic poles in the belief that Earth’s magnetic field there was channeling cosmic ray particles down into the atmosphere, causing the aurora. Such radiation was confirmed by the rockoons.

After the successful launching of the Soviet Sputnik and a succession of humiliating failures by the United States Navy’s Vanguard launcher, Dr. Van Allen was hastily told to refigure the radiation detectors he had designed for Vanguard to fly on the Army’s Explorer 1.

When it was launched, it detected radiation close to the anticipated intensity as it flew over recording stations in the United States. Because it carried no tape recorder, its observations were monitored only as it flew over ground observatories, but when readings began coming in from South America, where high counting rates had been expected, the Geiger counters became strangely silent.

“Our explanations — both wrong as it turns out,” Dr. Van Allen said later, “were either that our instruments were faulty or that cosmic rays do not strike the upper atmosphere over the tropics.”

The puzzle was resolved when his group realized that when radiation is extremely intense, such a detector is swamped and becomes silent. Explorer 3 carried a tape recorder, and the vast extent of the radiation belt was detected. Evidence then accumulated for two belts, a more intense inner one and a diffuse outer one. The Pioneer probe to the Moon launched on Oct. 11, 1958, documented the outer part of the belts.

The same year Dr. Van Allen took part in Project Argus, the firing of three atomic bombs 300 miles aloft over the South Atlantic to see if, like the radiation belts, their radioactive particles became trapped by Earth’s magnetism. The artificial belts were detected worldwide, producing auroras in both polar regions.

He also promoted international cooperation in science. On April 5, 1950, one of the most ambitious scientific efforts of all time, the International Geophysical Year, was born in his living room in Silver Spring, Md.

The guest of honor was Sydney Chapman, a professor of natural philosophy at Oxford and an authority on the link between solar eruptions and magnetic storms on Earth. The assembled scientists agreed that it was time for a global effort to understand the earth and its environment. Dr. Chapman became chairman of the committee that organized the 67-nation research program, which was carried out in 1957-58.

Also in 1958, the year that Sputnik undermined the American ego, Dr. Van Allen was chairman of a group of the country’s leading space scientists who recommended a manned landing on the Moon by 1968. The group included von Braun, technical director of the Army’s Ballistic Missile Agency, and directors of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

They proposed spending $10 billion over the next decade to “establish United States leadership in space research by 1960.” They recommended prompt creation of an independent national space establishment. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration was, in fact, established that year.

Later, however, Dr. Van Allen had a change of mind. The Apollo lunar landing project, despite its vast cost, proved meager in revolutionary discoveries. None were comparable to those made by unmanned spacecraft, like the Van Allen belts, but the unmanned programs received lower priority and financing.

Dr. Van Allen said Apollo was of primary value as a television spectacular, rather than for its scientific achievements.

Although he retired from active teaching in 1985, he continued monitoring data being sent to Earth from far out in the solar system. His instruments on Pioneer 10 conducted in 1973 the first survey of Jupiter’s radiation belts. Pioneer 11 followed with observations of Saturn’s belts. He was also a member of the scientific team for the Galileo mission orbiting Jupiter.

In 1994, Dr. Van Allen received the Kuiper Prize from the Division of Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society “in recognition of his many contributions to the field of planetary science, both through his investigations of planetary magnetospheres and through his advocacy of planetary exploration.”

He was president of the American Geophysical Union from 1982 to 1984, and he received the group’s William Bowie Medal in 1977. In 1987, he received the National Medal of Science from President Ronald Reagan, and in 1989 the king of Sweden presented him with the Crafoord Prize of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

Dr. Van Allen is survived by his wife of more than 60 years, Abigail Fithian Halsey Van Allen; five children, Cynthia Van Allen Schaffner of New York; Margot Van Allen Cairns of Vancouver, British Columbia; Sarah Van Allen Trimble of Washington; Thomas Van Allen of Aspen, Colo.; and Peter Van Allen of Philadelphia; and seven grandchildren.

In the early space age, Dr. Van Allen was often asked the value of space exploration. He sometimes replied with a impish smile, “I make a good living at it.”

Walter Sullivan, science editor of The New York Times, died in 1996.

    James A. Van Allen, Discoverer of Earth-Circling Radiation Belts, Is Dead at 91, NYT, 10.8.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/10/science/space/10vanallen.html

Scientists Chip Away at Mysteries of the Moon

August 8, 2006
The New York Times
By KENNETH CHANG

The Moon is slightly squashed, as if someone had held it at the poles between thumb and forefinger and squeezed, flattening it around its equatorial midsection. That is not surprising. The Moon spins, and the outward centrifugal force should indeed have generated a bulge as the molten magma of a young moon cooled to solid rock eons ago.

But as far back as 1799, the mathematician Pierre-Simon Laplace noticed a back-and-forth wobbling because of the Moon’s deformed shape. Although the flattening was slight — the Moon’s width, 2,159 miles, is about 2.5 miles greater than its pole-to-pole height — it was still greater than would be expected for its current rotation period of 27 days 7 hours 43 minutes and 11.5 seconds.

“The puzzle had been the Moon was too flat,” said Maria T. Zuber, a professor of geophysics and planetary sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Space probes of the 1960’s and 1970’s found a second deformity of the Moon: it is slightly elongated along the Moon-Earth axis. That is, if the Moon were sliced in half along its equator, the cross-section would not be a circle, but more like a football, with one of the narrow ends pointing toward Earth.

But no one could come up with a completely convincing explanation for the Moon’s current shape. That is not its only mystery. Another is why its near side, which always faces Earth, is so different in material and appearance from the far side. The Moon’s origin still holds some uncertainties, although many scientists believe that it formed out of the debris when a Mars-size object struck Earth 4.5 billion years ago.

“Quite a lot of the darned thing is still quite mysterious,” said Kimmo Innanen, a professor of astronomy at York University in Toronto.

In the current issue of Science, Dr. Zuber, with Jack Wisdom and Ian Garrick-Bethell, say they have a possible answer to the problem of the Moon’s shape. Actually, they say they have several.

What Laplace did not know is that the Moon is moving away from Earth and slowing down. Years of bouncing laser beams off mirrors left on the lunar surface by the Apollo astronauts show that each year the Moon is another 1.5 inches farther from Earth.

The Moon now orbits in what astronomers call a 1:1 resonance with Earth, its orbital period equal to its rotation time so that the same side of the Moon always faces Earth.

Thus, in the past, the Moon was much closer and took less time to orbit. With the 1:1 resonance, the Moon spun faster as well, possibly explaining the bulge. But those calculations did not come with the correct answer for observed distortion along the Moon-Earth axis. “They ought to be self-consistent,” Dr. Zuber said.

One suggestion has been that the Moon by chance cooled into this somewhat odd configuration. Other solid planets like Earth are not exactly in their predicted shape either.

The M.I.T. scientists, however, say the observed distortions are larger than would be expected for chance.

Instead, they suggest that in the Moon’s early history, it traveled in an elliptical rather than a circular orbit and that it was in a 3:2 resonance, spinning three times for every two orbits.

It would have been in this resonance for only a few hundred million years at most, the scientists said, before tidal forces slowed its spin and it fell into the current 1:1 circular resonance.

Their calculations show that such an orbit would provide the necessary forces to produce the Moon’s shape. “There’s a 200-year-old problem, and we’ve got the first solution that works,” Dr. Zuber said.

They also found that orbits with higher resonances, like two spins for every orbit, could produce the same lunar shape. “It’s a bunch of families of solutions,” Dr. Zuber said.

In an accompanying commentary in Science, Dr. Innanen described the proposed solution as “ingenious.”

But Peter M. Goldreich, an emeritus professor of astrophysics and planetary physics at the California Institute of Technology, said the M.I.T. team did not explain how the Moon was caught in the 3:2 resonance. “That is a real weakness,” he said.

While an elliptical orbit and a 3:2 resonance may explain the shape, they would not explain the disparities between the Moon’s sides. The crust on the near side is much thinner, with vast plains of dark basalt, called maria (pronounced MAH-ree-uh), that erupted long ago. The crust of the far side is thicker, with many more craters; there are few maria.

Partly because of the denser basalt of the mare, the Moon’s center of mass is not at the center, but shifted by more than a mile. But how that shift occurred is unknown.

“That would be a good research project,” Dr. Innanen said.

Many of the mysteries depend on a better understanding of the Moon’s early history. Under the prevailing theory that the Moon formed after something the size of Mars slammed into Earth, scientists believe that the Moon initially orbited very close, perhaps just 16,000 miles from Earth (compared with roughly 238,000 miles today) before moving outward.

David J. Stevenson, a professor of planetary science at Caltech, said the evidence for the collision theory was solid. Then he stopped. He said instead, “The argument against the alternatives is strong.”

In the past, scientists have suggested that the Moon is somehow captured gravitationally or that it formed out of material spun off from the Earth. The mysteries have persisted because little new data have been collected.

In the three decades since the Apollo Moon landings, NASA has sent only one probe, a bargain-basement one, to the Moon, the Lunar Prospector that orbited it in 1998 and 1999.

NASA’s push to send astronauts back has led to robotic missions as well, including the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, scheduled for launching in 2008. India, Japan and China are also planning robotic missions.

And that, scientists say, could lead to a scientific renaissance in the study of the Moon.

“Talk to me in five years,” Dr. Zuber said.

    Scientists Chip Away at Mysteries of the Moon, NYT, 8.8.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/08/science/space/08moon.html

Space shuttle rolled out to Florida launch pad

Wed Aug 2, 2006 10:46 AM ET
Reuters
By Irene Klotz

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - The U.S. space shuttle Atlantis was moved to its ocean-side launch pad early on Wednesday, as NASA readies itself to resume construction of the International Space Station later this month.

Twice thwarted from being rolled out by overnight thunderstorms earlier this week, the shuttle began an eight-hour crawl to the launch pad at 2 a.m. (0600 GMT).

Despite the delay, NASA still has plenty of time to prepare the shuttle for blastoff as early as August 27, said Kennedy Space Center spokesman Bruce Buckingham.

The mission will be the agency's first space station assembly flight since before the 2003 Columbia accident forced NASA to ground the shuttle fleet for safety upgrades.

Columbia fell apart on re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere because falling insulation foam from the external fuel tank had knocked a hole in its wing during liftoff. Seven crew members died.

The three remaining U.S. space shuttles are the only spacecraft capable of hauling large components to the $100 billion multinational space station, and the project must be completed before the shuttle fleet is retired in 2010.

Shuttle Discovery returned from a successful test flight last month, clearing the way for NASA to resume flying up to five regular missions per year.

"We've gone through a very difficult period in the last 3-1/2 years," Atlantis astronaut Joe Tanner said in an interview.

"We needed to understand some things that we weren't maybe paying enough attention to before. We've done that work and feel pretty good about it."

Tanner and his crew mates have been training for four years to install the station's next major module -- a second set of solar arrays that will double the station's onboard power.

With laboratories built by Europe and Japan due to arrive as early as next year, boosting the station's power supply is a crucial step.

The solar array module that will be carried aboard Atlantis weighs nearly 35,000 pounds (16 tonnes) -- one of the heaviest loads ever carried aboard a shuttle. It fills the shuttle's payload bay.

"It's a bit of a shoehorn operation to even get it out of the payload bay when we're docked with station," Tanner said.

Installation of the arrays requires back-to-back spacewalks on three days of the flight.

Four of the six astronauts assigned to the flight have been trained for spacewalks.

Tanner and his crew mates have one more major training exercise planned before launch. Next week, the six Atlantis astronauts are scheduled to scramble aboard the shuttle to participate in a practice launch countdown.

    Space shuttle rolled out to Florida launch pad, R, 2.8.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=scienceNews&storyID=2006-08-02T144545Z_01_N02240469_RTRUKOC_0_US-SPACE-SHUTTLE.xml&WTmodLoc=Home-C5-scienceNews-2

NASA’s Goals Delete Mention of Home Planet
 

July 22, 2006
The New York Times
By ANDREW C. REVKIN

From 2002 until this year, NASA’s mission statement, prominently featured in its budget and planning documents, read: “To understand and protect our home planet; to explore the universe and search for life; to inspire the next generation of explorers ... as only NASA can.”

In early February, the statement was quietly altered, with the phrase “to understand and protect our home planet” deleted. In this year’s budget and planning documents, the agency’s mission is “to pioneer the future in space exploration, scientific discovery and aeronautics research.”

David E. Steitz, a spokesman for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, said the aim was to square the statement with President Bush’s goal of pursuing human spaceflight to the Moon and Mars.

But the change comes as an unwelcome surprise to many NASA scientists, who say the “understand and protect” phrase was not merely window dressing but actively influenced the shaping and execution of research priorities. Without it, these scientists say, there will be far less incentive to pursue projects to improve understanding of terrestrial problems like climate change caused by greenhouse gas emissions.

“We refer to the mission statement in all our research proposals that go out for peer review, whenever we have strategy meetings,” said Philip B. Russell, a 25-year NASA veteran who is an atmospheric chemist at the Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. “As civil servants, we’re paid to carry out NASA’s mission. When there was that very easy-to-understand statement that our job is to protect the planet, that made it much easier to justify this kind of work.”

Several NASA researchers said they were upset that the change was made at NASA headquarters without consulting the agency’s 19,000 employees or informing them ahead of time.

Though the “understand and protect” phrase was deleted in February, when the Bush administration submitted budget and planning documents to Congress, its absence has only recently registered with NASA employees.

Mr. Steitz, the NASA spokesman, said the agency might have to improve internal communications, but he defended the way the change was made, saying it reflected the management style of Michael D. Griffin, the administrator at the agency.

“Strategic planning comes from headquarters down,” he said, and added, “I don’t think there was any mal-intent or idea of exclusion.”

The line about protecting the earth was added to the mission statement in 2002 under Sean O’Keefe, the first NASA administrator appointed by President Bush, and was drafted in an open process with scientists and employees across the agency.

In the National Aeronautics and Space Act, which established the agency in 1958, the first objective of the agency was listed as “the expansion of human knowledge of the earth and of phenomena in the atmosphere and space.”

And since 1972, when NASA launched the first Landsat satellite to track changes on the earth’s surface, the agency has been increasingly involved in monitoring the environment and as a result has been immersed in political disputes over environmental policy and spending, said W. Henry Lambright, a professor of public administration and political science at Syracuse University who has studied the trend.

The shift in language echoes a shift in the agency’s budgets toward space projects and away from earth missions, a shift that began in 2004, the year Mr. Bush announced his vision of human missions to the Moon and beyond.

The “understand and protect” phrase was cited repeatedly by James E. Hansen, a climate scientist at NASA who said publicly last winter that he was being threatened by political appointees for speaking out about the dangers posed by greenhouse gas emissions.

Dr. Hansen’s comments started a flurry of news media coverage in late January; on Feb. 3, Mr. Griffin issued a statement of “scientific openness.”

The revised mission statement was released with the agency’s proposed 2007 budget on Feb. 6. But Mr. Steitz said Dr. Hansen’s use of the phrase and its subsequent disappearance from the mission statement was “pure coincidence.”

Dr. Hansen, who directs the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, a NASA office, has been criticized by industry-backed groups and Republican officials for associating with environmental campaigners and his endorsement of Senator John Kerry in the 2004 presidential election.

Dr. Hansen said the change might reflect White House eagerness to shift the spotlight away from global warming.

“They’re making it clear that they have the authority to make this change, that the president sets the objectives for NASA, and that they prefer that NASA work on something that’s not causing them a problem,” he said.

    NASA’s Goals Delete Mention of Home Planet, NYT, 22.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/22/science/22nasa.html?hp&ex=1153627200&en=7a71420a9103fea3&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Walk in Space for $15 Million (Plus Airfare)

July 21, 2006
The New York Times
By JOHN SCHWARTZ

The company that sent the first tourists to space is about to start offering its clients an alluring add-on: a spacewalk.

Space Adventures Ltd., a company based in Vienna, Va., that has sent three very wealthy men to orbit the earth on the International Space Station, is planning to announce today that future customers will be able to take an hour-and-a-half trip outside the station as well.

The price? Just $15 million, on top of the $20 million for the flight itself. For people who can afford $20 million for a 10-day vacation, the extra $15 million might seem like little more than overtipping.

The spacewalks have been approved by the Federal Space Agency of the Russian Federation, which provides training and transportation to the station on Soyuz rockets, said Eric Anderson, the chief executive of Space Adventures.

Using the initials for extravehicular activity, the technical term for a spacewalk, Aleksei Krasnov, director of the Russian space agency, said in a statement that space tourists “could potentially perform an EVA” with a month’s training, and if they had the proper “physical and psychological capabilities.” The Russians have been eager to commercialize space and get most of the fees that Space Adventures collects.

A NASA spokeswoman, Melissa Mathews, said the agency had not been informed by Russia about any intention to sell EVA’s.

Fewer than 450 people have traveled to space, and the club of spacewalkers is even more exclusive. Just 151 people have stepped outside the relative safety of their craft to greet the void with only a visor to separate life and death.

“Spacewalk is the ultimate experience that we’ve managed to invent as humans,” said Tom Jones, a former astronaut and spacewalker who is an adviser to Space Adventures.

Being outside the craft when “there’s nothing between you and the ground below but empty space,” he said, is “incomparable.”

As for the nausea and vomiting that some astronauts experience, and which could preclude a spacewalk, Mr. Jones said “almost everybody feels good after two or three days.”

Warming to the idea of another shot at that view, he said, “I think if I had 15 million, I’d go for it.”

    Walk in Space for $15 Million (Plus Airfare), NYT, 21.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/21/science/space/21adventure.html


 

The Discovery landed on Runway 15 at Kennedy Space Center's Shuttle Landing Facility
at 9:14 a.m. on Monday, ending its two-week mission.

NASA        NYT

 All Smiles as Shuttle Ends a Nearly Perfect Mission        NYT        18.7.2006
 http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/18/science/space/18shuttle.html

All Smiles as Shuttle Ends a Nearly Perfect Mission

July 18, 2006
The New York Times
By JOHN SCHWARTZ

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., July 17 — With a distinctive double sonic boom and a whooshing glide to the ground, the space shuttle Discovery landed safely Monday morning, ending a nearly flawless 13-day mission.

“Welcome back, Discovery,” Stephen N. Frick, a NASA astronaut communicating with the shuttle from mission control in Houston, said to the shuttle commander, Col. Steven W. Lindsey of the Air Force, after the shuttle had come to a halt.

Colonel Lindsey replied, “This was a great mission, a really great mission.”

The Discovery’s successful return nonetheless marks the beginning of the end of the shuttle program, which President Bush has ordered to be shut down by 2010.

In that time, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration is to perform 16 more shuttle missions to complete the International Space Station, the half-built orbiting laboratory that was the Discovery’s destination in this flight. The agency will then embark on the president’s stated goal of returning to the Moon in a new generation of space vehicles.

The morale boost of a successful flight after the loss of the shuttle Columbia in 2003 and a frustrating first test flight last year was evident in the beaming smiles of the crew and NASA officials — even Michael D. Griffin, the self-described emotionless engineer who is the space agency’s administrator.

N. Wayne Hale Jr., the shuttle program manager, said at a news conference at mission control in Houston, “The shuttle is back.”

Still, questions remain about whether the program has solved the safety problems that have plagued it over the years — problems that NASA officials pledged to pursue.

NASA managers said that the success of this mission reinforced their view that they could step up the tempo of launchings, with the shuttle Atlantis returning to space as early as Aug. 28 and the mission after that beginning in mid-December.

Mr. Griffin cautioned at a news conference here at the Kennedy Space Center, “We’re not going to get overconfident.” Engineers and analysts will pore over the data from this flight in the coming weeks and months, he said, to better understand issues like foam debris from the shuttle’s external tank before launching the next mission.

The amount of foam shed in the Discovery’s July 4 liftoff — the problem that doomed the Columbia and continued to plague last year’s return-to-flight mission — posed no threat to the shuttle, with the biggest piece weighing less than two ounces.

But a member of the independent board that investigated the Columbia disaster said the risks of shuttle flight were still very real.

“This shows that with appropriate care and vigilance, the odds of operating the shuttle with acceptable risk are good,” said the board member, John M. Logsdon, the director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University. But he added: “It doesn’t mean the shuttle is safe. The shuttle will remain a very risky vehicle to be operated with extreme care.”

The crew took thousands of pounds of supplies to the half-finished space station, performed three spacewalks in which they repaired broken equipment to allow the resumption of construction on future shuttle flights, and tested possible repair techniques.

They also carried up a new crew member, Thomas Reiter, a German astronaut from the European Space Agency. Mr. Reiter remained behind aboard the space station, bringing its crew to three for the first time since the Columbia disaster.

The crew was led by Colonel Lindsey, who was making his fourth trip to space and his second as a commander. The pilot, Cmdr. Mark E. Kelly of the Navy, was on his second shuttle mission. The two spacewalkers were Piers J. Sellers of England and Michael E. Fossum. The flight engineer, Cmdr. Lisa M. Nowak of the Navy, operated the robot arm during the spacewalks, along with Stephanie D. Wilson, who also supervised the transfer of tons of cargo between the two craft.

Despite the astronauts’ grueling schedule, there was time to both laugh and marvel. At a news conference here on Monday, Colonel Lindsey recalled that Commander Nowak’s ponytail, which acquired a will of its own in zero gravity, had gotten stuck on a strip of Velcro in the mid-deck of the shuttle.

Colonel Lindsey said he and the pilot, Commander Kelly, had had a view on the way home that was even more spectacular than usual.

“It started out in darkness, and of course you see the orange glow as the plasma starts heating up,” he said, referring to the superheated gases of re-entry into the atmosphere. “And you can see what looks like explosions out the windows, plasma flashes and things like that.”

As the shuttle banked left, “I could see the earth below as the sun was coming up,” he continued. “And Mark, through his window, through the plasma, could see the moon. It was just wild.” The shuttle did not break through the cloud layer until just 10,000 feet — less than a minute before landing. “I had never gone through weather like that before on a real shuttle landing,” he said.

NASA managers and engineers who suffered through the Columbia disaster and last year’s troubled mission of the Discovery were visibly moved to see a shuttle finally land in Florida again. The Columbia was heading for the Kennedy landing strip when it broke up over Texas, and the Discovery was diverted to Edwards Air Force Base in California for its landing last year.

“Columbia’s landing day was a horrible day,” said Michael D. Leinbach, the launching director. “Today was a great day.”

In Washington, lawmakers welcomed the safe return of the shuttle and applauded the crew’s effort. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, Republican of Texas and chairwoman of the Senate Commerce subcommittee on science and space, called the mission “an important milestone in our nation’s space exploration history.”

Representative Sherwood Boehlert, Republican of New York and the chairman of the House Science Committee, who has been cautious about the shuttle program, commended the NASA scientists, engineers and technicians, who have “worked tirelessly over the past three years to mitigate the problems that tragically doomed the shuttle Columbia in 2003.”

Mr. Boehlert added, “While NASA must continue to be vigilant, the shuttle is now poised to proceed” with planned missions. President Bush issued a statement from the Group of 8 summit meeting in Strelna, Russia, congratulating NASA’s workers for “putting our space program back on track” and calling the program “a source of great national pride.”

Experts on space policy also expressed relief that the mission had gone so well. “They’ve got the right stuff back,” said John Pike, the director of GlobalSecurity.org.

But he added that the success did not change the fact that the shuttle program itself was in its last phase.

“Mr. Bush has decided that Mr. Nixon’s space shuttle and Mr. Reagan’s space station are not the way he wants to go,” Mr. Pike said. “He likes John Kennedy, going to the moon.”

A critic of the space agency, Roger A. Pielke Jr., director of the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado, questioned in an e-mail interview whether the “acceptable risk” cited by Professor Logsdon was truly acceptable. “If the reliability of the shuttle is 99 percent, as NASA has suggested,” he said, “then there is a significant possibility that there will be another lost shuttle before NASA completes the program.” In the face of those odds, he went on, “there is no shame in declaring victory and moving on to the next challenge.”

But Administrator Griffin, at his news conference, noted that it took a thousand years from the days the first ships ventured out to open water to the safe ocean voyagers of today. Space travel, by comparison, is in its infancy.

“We’ve been doing this stuff for 50 years,” he said. “The enterprise is eminently worth doing. It’s part of what makes us human.”

Warren E. Leary contributed reporting from Houston for this article, and John Files from Washington.

    All Smiles as Shuttle Ends a Nearly Perfect Mission, NYT, 18.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/18/science/space/18shuttle.html

Space Shuttle Discovery, Crew Land Safely

July 18, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 2:18 a.m. ET
The New York Times

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) -- After the wheels were down and Discovery rolled to a halt from a 5.3 million-mile journey in space, the six astronauts on the 13-day mission looked at each other and said, ''We did it.''

With the second return-to-flight mission over and all its goals completed, a jubilant feeling spread throughout the sprawling work force of NASA and its contractors after the shuttle landed at Kennedy Space Center. It has been a rare feeling since the Columbia disaster in 2003 that killed seven astronauts.

All around the Johnson Space Center in Houston, home to Mission Control, posters advertised the homecoming ceremony that was set for the astronauts on Tuesday. ''We're BAAAACK!'' the signs shouted in big red letters.

''This is as good a mission as we've ever flown,'' said NASA Administrator Michael Griffin.

The biggest achievement of the mission was to show that a space shuttle could launch without dangerous foam shedding from its external tank during launch and striking the vehicle like what doomed Columbia. NASA redesigned the external tank after Columbia, and again last year after a 1-pound piece of foam came off during the first return-to-flight mission and caused the shuttle fleet to be grounded for almost a year.

Almost as important, two Discovery spacewalking astronauts repaired a rail car that is vital for the continued construction of the international space station, and the crew tested inspection and repair techniques on the space shuttle.

''It seemed like every single day that we were up there, we had something that was difficult to do,'' Steve Lindsey, Discovery's commander, said Monday, surrounded by his crew. ''These guys would pull it off and make it look flawless.''

The shuttle carried up seven astronauts, but departed the space station on Saturday with six -- Lindsey, co-pilot Mark Kelly, Michael Fossum, Piers Sellers, Lisa Nowak and Stephanie Wilson. German astronaut Thomas Reiter of the European Space Agency was left behind for a half-year stay, boosting the station's crew size to three.

Despite the successes, Lindsey said the lessons of Columbia should never be forgotten. NASA was criticized for squelching concerns about foam problems with Columbia. Before Discovery's Fourth of July launch, dissent was aired openly with the space agency's top safety officer and chief engineer opposing a launch until further changes were made to the external tank. Griffin overruled them.

''We obviously have learned the technical lessons of Columbia,'' Lindsey said. ''We're still learning them ... but more importantly we've learned the cultural, organizational lessons of Columbia and that's the one thing we don't ever want to ever forget.''

During descent, Discovery's astronauts and flight controllers kept close watch on a slightly leaking power unit, and a last-minute buildup of clouds caused Lindsey to change the direction of the landing.

The crew had worked almost nonstop during the mission, and admitted they were tired, but they adjusted to gravity without any problem and appeared healthy at a news conference. All six astronauts walked around and examined the parked shuttle after landing, along with Griffin and top NASA administrators.

''This is the cleanest orbiter anybody remembers seeing,'' Griffin said.

Griffin noted that NASA faces 16 more shuttle flights to complete the space station and, hopefully, repair the popular Hubble Space Telescope before the shuttle fleet is grounded in 2010. A decision is expected by fall on whether to send a shuttle to Hubble one final time to extend the observatory's life.

NASA barely has time to bask in its success since another shuttle launch is scheduled in six weeks. Atlantis' upcoming mission will deliver and install a massive beam and set of solar wings to the international space station. The space agency is aiming for a liftoff as early as Aug. 27.

For Sellers, the most satisfying part of Discovery's mission was at the end of the journey when the crew exchanged smiles.

''We all stopped, frankly, and said 'We're done,''' Sellers said. '''We did it.'''

------

On the Net:

NASA: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov

    Space Shuttle Discovery, Crew Land Safely, NYT, 17.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Space-Shuttle.html

Astronaut Piers J. Sellers, STS-121 mission specialist, participated in the mission's third and final spacewalk,
a 7-hour, 11-minute excursion to demonstrate orbiter heat shield repair techniques.

NASA        NYT

 All Smiles as Shuttle Ends a Nearly Perfect Mission        NYT        18.7.2006
 http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/18/science/space/18shuttle.html

Repair Drill in Spacewalk Takes 7 Hours
 

July 13, 2006
The New York Times
By WARREN E. LEARY

HOUSTON, July 12 — Two astronauts ventured on Wednesday into the cargo bay of the space shuttle Discovery and tested techniques that might be used to make emergency repairs to a shuttle’s heat shield.

The astronauts, Piers J. Sellers and Lt. Col. Michael E. Fossum, stepped into space with caulk guns and putty knives, and made their way to the back of the cargo bay to work on heat shield samples brought up in a cargo box. It was their third and final spacewalk since the shuttle docked with the International Space Station on July 6 for a 13-day mission.

Mr. Sellers and Colonel Fossum applied an experimental compound for fixing heat shield damage, and took videos with an infrared camera designed to spot heat shield cracks that might be too small to be seen.

The spacewalk, which lasted 7 hours 11 minutes, went 41 minutes longer than planned so the astronauts could attach equipment to the space station that could be used for future construction on the outpost.

Tony Ceccacci, mission flight director at the Johnson Space Center, said at a news conference here that the spacewalk was a success, although it was tiring for the Discovery crew.

“Tomorrow, the crew’s going to get a well-deserved day off,” Mr. Ceccacci said. “They’ll be doing the standard: looking out the window.”

The two spacewalkers spent most of their time working on samples of the carbon composite material that lines the shuttle’s nose and the leading edges of its wings, material designed to withstand the hottest re-entry temperatures, which approach 3,000 degrees. The hard but brittle heat protection material, called reinforced carbon carbon, is the kind that was damaged by launching debris on the shuttle Columbia three years ago, leading to the loss of the craft and its seven-member crew.

Since then, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration has focused on keeping debris from falling from the shuttle’s external fuel tank at launching. Major damage to the heat shield would require abandoning the shuttle while the crew took refuge in the space station for later rescue, agency officials said. But NASA has also developed techniques and materials for repairing the tiles and the carbon composite panels that shield the shuttle if they suffer minor damage.

Mr. Sellers and Colonel Fossum focused on applying a special putty to cracked and gouged samples of the composite material to see how it would work in weightlessness and at a range of temperatures in space.

They used special caulking guns filed with a sticky, black material that has the consistency of peanut butter and that the space agency calls NOAX, for nonoxide adhesive experimental.

“O.K., we’re starting to get goo,” Mr. Sellers said as he squeezed the trigger of the caulk gun. “Got goo, good goo!”

Methodically working their way through the samples in the box, the astronauts applied the NOAX and worked it in with their tools, sometimes adding multiple layers and commenting on how well it stuck or how easily it could be smoothed out.

“The best practice for this is to have an old house in Houston,” Mr. Sellers said as he smoothed the sealant into a crack.

The spacewalk went without major incident, but Mr. Sellers lost one of his spatulas, and mission control confirmed that it had been spotted drifting away from the shuttle.

“It’s of no hazard to us,” said Tomas Gonzalez-Torres, the mission’s chief spacewalk officer, adding that the 14-inch-long metal tool would be tracked by radar.

    Repair Drill in Spacewalk Takes 7 Hours, NYT, 13.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/13/science/space/13shuttle.html

Astronauts, Happy About Mission,

Prepare for 3rd Spacewalk

July 12, 2006
The New York Times
By WARREN E. LEARY

HOUSTON, July 11 — Astronauts aboard the space shuttle Discovery continued to move supplies into the International Space Station on Tuesday while fielding a phone call from President Bush and preparing for their third and final spacewalk.

Crews of the shuttle and the space station received a late morning private call from Mr. Bush, who said he had seen part of a Monday spacewalk in which the astronauts repaired a remote-controlled sled that crosses rails atop the station, and wanted to thank them for their service to the country. He also invited the Discovery crew and their families to visit the White House after the mission, a White House spokesman said.

NASA officials and astronauts also said that they were feeling good about the success of the Discovery’s mission so far, and believed that the shuttle program was ready to resume the task of completing the space station.

The shuttle appears to have come through launching with little or no damage, evidence that the time and expense of many modifications had worked, Anthony J. Ceccacci, the mission’s lead flight director, said at a news conference here at the Johnson Space Center. In addition, two successful spacewalks by the Discovery astronauts put the station in shape for continued expansion on future missions, he said.

“It gives everybody a really good feeling that we’re getting there,” Mr. Ceccacci said. “It’s time to get going and start building the station.”

Astronauts voiced the same confidence.

“My brother put it very well,” the shuttle pilot, Cmdr. Mark E. Kelly, told The Associated Press in an interview from space, describing a telephone conversation with his twin and fellow astronaut Scott Kelly. “He said ‘We’re back, baby!’ ”

The astronauts Piers J. Sellers and Lt. Col. Michael E. Fossum checked their spacesuits to prepare for Wednesday’s spacewalk, in which they will enter the shuttle’s cargo bay and test materials that might be used to repair damage to the hard, black material that protects the nose and wing leading edges from the hottest heat of re-entry. A case in the bay contains samples of this composite material, called reinforced carbon carbon, and an assortment of plugs and special putty that might be used to seal small cracks and abrasions.

The shuttle Columbia was destroyed on Feb. 1, 2003, while returning from a mission because of damage to this material on a wing caused by pieces of insulating foam that fell from the shuttle’s external fuel tank and struck it during launching.

The spacewalkers are also expected to test a special infrared camera to see if it can pick up small cracks in the reinforced carbon carbon that be invisible to the human eye. It is hoped that the heat-detecting camera can find distortions in surface temperature that could indicate cracks that might need to be sealed or smoothed with a repair material.

Since the Columbia disaster, NASA has been testing experimental methods that might be used in space to repair minor damage to a shuttle’s heat shield, if found. Major damage would require abandoning the shuttle while the crew took refuge in the space station for later rescue.

    Astronauts, Happy About Mission, Prepare for 3rd Spacewalk, NYT, 12.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/12/science/space/12shuttle.html

Shuttle Crew Works to Fix Part of Station

July 11, 2006
The New York Times
By JOHN SCHWARTZ

HOUSTON, July 10 — Two astronauts from the space shuttle Discovery spent nearly seven hours outside the International Space Station on Monday in the second spacewalk of their 13-day mission.

The walk, to repair parts of the space station, began at 8:14 a.m., Eastern time. The astronauts, Michael E. Fossum and Piers J. Sellers, completed their work and, sounding thoroughly winded, began re-entering the airlock about 2:45 p.m. The spacewalk officially ended at 3:01.

The work was rigorous. “This is a beast,” Mr. Sellers said at one point.

The first task was attaching a bar to part of a pump for the space station so two other astronauts, Lisa M. Nowak and Stephanie D. Wilson, could work inside the station to grab the assembly with the station’s robotic arm and move it into position for installation.

Once the bar was in place, Mr. Sellers and Mr. Fossum moved on to the next task: replacing part of a transporter for equipment.

The station is only half-built, and continuing the construction requires that the transporter work. The transporter is like a remote-controlled railway car; it has two cables to carry power and data so that if one is damaged, the transporter can still work.

NASA requires that the transporter have two good cables. But a safety device that is supposed to undo snags by cutting a cable fired unexpectedly in December, disabling one of the two cables. The space agency has not yet determined why that happened.

In their first spacewalk, on Saturday, Mr. Fossum and Mr. Sellers installed a metal device to keep the other cutter from slicing its cable. Monday’s spacewalk involved replacing a cable-reeling assembly on what is known as the trailing umbilical system.

They removed the old cable-reeling unit, but the spacewalk stretched on as Mr. Fossum struggled to put the new one in place, a task that required more force than is easily applied in a microgravity environment. Mr. Sellers came over to work with Mr. Fossum to wrestle it into place.

Mr. Sellers, while unlatching the old umbilical assembly, said he was “going slow here,” and added, “Don’t want to bump anything expensive.”

Mr. Fossum replied, “It’s all expensive.”

    Shuttle Crew Works to Fix Part of Station, NYT, 11.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/11/science/space/11shuttle.html

Astronauts Begin 2nd Spacewalk

July 10, 2006
The New York Times
By JOHN SCHWARTZ

HOUSTON, July 10 — Astronauts left the International Space Station this morning to complete repairs on a equipment transporter and to install a new pump module for the International Space Station.

It is the second spacewalk of the 13-day mission, and began at 8:14 Eastern time. The astronauts, Mike Fossum and Piers Sellers, should take about seven hours.

The first task was attaching a grapple bar to the pump module so that two other astronauts, Lisa Nowak and Stephanie Wilson, could work from inside the station to grab the assembly with the station’s robotic arm and move it into position so that it can be installed.

The work was rigorous, and both spacewalkers sounded winded as the worked. “This is a best,” Mr. Sellers said at one point.

Once the bar was in place, Mr. Sellers and Mr. Fossum moved on to the next task: replacing a part of the equipment transporter.

The station is only half built, and getting on with the construction requires that the transporter work. The transporter is like a remove-controlled railway car, and has two cables that carry power and data so that if one is damaged, the transporter can still work. NASA rules require that the transporter have two good cables to be used. But one of the safety devices that is supposed to undo snags by cutting a cable fired unexpectedly in December, disabling one of the two cables. NASA has not yet determined why that happened.

In Saturday’s spacewalk, the two astronauts placed a metal device to keep the other cutter from slicing its cable. Today’s spacewalk involves replacing the cable reel assembly on what is known as the trailing umbilical system. Mr. Sellers will remove the unit, which weighs 330 pounds on earth, and at one point will have the old unit in one hand and the new one in the other as he swaps the two out. The new one has no cable cutter.

Between the two tasks this morning, Mr. Sellers and Mr. Fossum took a moment to look out over the earth. “Mark, what river are we flying over?” Mr. Sellers asked the pilot, Mark E. Kelly, a Navy commander and the coordinator of the spacewalk activities.

“Amazon,” Commander Kelly replied.

“You’re kidding,” Mr. Fossum said.

“That’s a big river,” Commander Kelly said.

“It’s huge,” Mr. Sellers said in concurrence.

    Astronauts Begin 2nd Spacewalk, NYT, 10.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/10/science/space/10cnd-shuttle.html?hp&ex=1152590400&en=44f3445eab51c34f&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Shuttle Astronauts End First Space Walk

July 8, 2006
The New York Times
By JOHN SCHWARTZ

HOUSTON, July 8 - Two astronauts from the shuttle Discovery ended a spacewalk of more than seven and a half hours after doing a bit of on-orbit repair to a malfunctioning part of the International Space Station and testing a new use for the shuttle's robot arm and sensor boom as a work platform.

Astronauts two Piers J. Sellers and Michael E. Fossum returned to the space station's Quest airlock just after 4:30 Eastern.

The astronauts began easing out of the airlock at 9:17 a.m. The two major objectives of the spacewalk were fixing a small railway car on the outside of the station that transports equipment and testing their ability to use the 100-foot-long extended shuttle boom for shuttle inspection and repair -- an exercise that has been dubbed "bouncing on the boom." In the morning packet of messages and instructions sent up to the shuttle, mission managers joked that the exercise "Sounds like a new country song."

The first task involved making sure that the power and data cable to the transporter were safe. The transporter has two sets of the cables, to ensure that if one fails the other will still work. But in December, the transporter's cable cutter, a safety device for overcoming snags, cut one of the cables. NASA still does not know why, but managers of the space station wanted to keep the other cutter from sabotaging the other cable, since the transporter is essential for completing construction on the station.

An attempt to block the cutter with a bolt on a previous space walk by the space station crew was unsuccessful, but Mr. Fossum was able to install the blocker on this walk. A second step to restoring the transporter will come on Monday, when the astronauts will replace the cut cable.

The astronauts then moved on to the second objective of the spacewalk, which is to test the ability of astronauts to use the 50-foot extension to the shuttle's 50-foot Robot arm as a work platform for shuttle inspection and repair.

That task involved attaching a work platform to the end of the boom and then taking a ride on the platform, mimicking motions that they would make during repairs to the shuttle.

Inside the shuttle, astronauts Lisa Nowak and Stephanie Wilson operated the robotic arms for the shuttle and the station.

Even before climbing aboard the boom, Mr. Fossom found "It definitely moves with just a few pounds" of pressure. "Whoa, look at that," he said, as it oscillated in front of him. But as the tests progressed, it the boom wobbled less than NASA engineers had predicted.

Mr. Sellers, who was taking his fourth spacewalk, was the lead spacewalker on this excursion, and could be seen on camera wearing a suit with red stripes. Mr. Fossum, a first-time spacewalker, wore a plain white space suit.

The next space walk is scheduled to begin on Monday, and will involve installing a spare pump to the station's thermal control system and completing the work on the transporter.

    Shuttle Astronauts End First Space Walk, NYT, 8.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/08/science/space/08cnd-shuttle.html

Shuttle Astronauts Conduct Space Walk

July 8, 2006
The New York Times
By JOHN SCHWARTZ

Two spacewalking astronauts left the International Space Station this morning for repair work and tests more than 200 miles above the earth.

Astronauts two Piers J. Sellers and Michael E. Fossum eased out of the space station's Quest airlock at 9:17 a.m. Eastern time to begin their six-and-a-half-hour space walk, which can be viewed live on NASA TV (http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html).

The two major objectives of the spacewalk are fixing a small railway car on the outside of the station that transports equipment and testing their ability to use the 100-foot-long extended shuttle boom for shuttle inspection and repair -- an exercise that has been dubbed "bouncing on the boom." In the morning packet of messages and instructions sent up to the shuttle, mission managers joked that the exercise "Sounds like a new country song."

The first task involves making sure that the power and data cable to the transporter are safe. The transporter has two sets of the cables, to ensure that if one fails the other will still work. But in December, the transporter's cable cutter, a safety device for overcoming snags, cut one of the cables. NASA still does not know why, but managers of the space station wanted to ensure that the other cutter does not sabotage the other cable, since the transporter is essential for completing construction on the station.

An attempt to block the cutter with a bolt on a previous space walk by the space station crew was unsuccessful, but Mr. Fossum was able to install the blocker on this walk. A second step to restoring the transporter will come on Monday, when the astronauts will replace the cut cable.

The astronauts then moved on to the second objective of the spacewalk, which is to test the ability of astronauts to use the 50-foot extension to the shuttle's 50-foot Robot arm as a work platform for shuttle inspection and repair.

That task involves attaching a work platform to the end of the boom and then will take a ride on the platform, mimicking motions that they would make during repairs to the shuttle.

Inside the shuttle, astronauts Lisa Nowak and Stephanie Wilson will operate the robotic arms for the shuttle and the station.

    Shuttle Astronauts Conduct Space Walk, NYT, 8.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/08/science/space/08cnd-shuttle.html?hp&ex=1152417600&en=1db04324e95b890e&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Seeking Signs of Trouble, NASA Studies Shuttle Images

July 8, 2006
The New York Times
By JOHN SCHWARTZ

HOUSTON, July 7 — On a day devoted to moving thousands of pounds of supplies from the space shuttle Discovery to the International Space Station, engineers and analysts on the ground scrutinized images of the shuttle on Friday for damage that might cause problems in the brutal heat of re-entry.

Officials said that the shuttle came through the rigors of ascent in a remarkably clean state and that they had narrowed their analysis to a few unresolved issues.

In a news briefing on Friday, Steve Poulos, the space shuttle orbiter projects manager, said analysts were still examining two blemishes on the hard panels that line the leading edge of the right wing.

Mr. Poulos added that teams were continuing to work through questions about a piece of stiff cloth known as a gap filler, which sits between tiles so they do not rub against each other as the shuttle flexes. The filler is poking out from the underside of the craft, toward the rear; a similar piece near the nose was removed by a spacewalking astronaut during the Discovery's mission last summer.

Analysts are also trying to determine whether a blemish on the nose of the vehicle was a weakened spot, Mr. Poulos said, or something as harmless as bird droppings.

Neither Mr. Poulos nor John Shannon, the deputy shuttle chief and leader of the mission management team, appeared to be worried about any of the three issues, though they said they were withholding judgment until the analysis was complete.

"We don't rule out anything until the analysts come out and say it's not a problem," Mr. Shannon said.

At the briefing, the officials also announced that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration had decided to extend the mission by a day to add a third spacewalk.

If mission managers do decide to have an astronaut remove the gap fillers, that bit of maintenance would take place during the added spacewalk, on the ninth day of the mission. The walk, which mission planners had long considered but which depended on the condition of the shuttle's fuel cells, will be devoted to testing repair techniques that the space agency is developing for the shuttle's delicate insulating tiles and panels.

The first spacewalk of the mission will take six and a half hours starting Saturday morning and will involve repairs to a minirailcar system on the outside of the station that transports equipment. In another experiment on the first spacewalk, two astronauts, Piers J. Sellers and Michael E. Fossum, will ride at the end of the shuttle's robot arm and extension boom, which together stretch 100 feet, to get a feel for the swaying and bouncing that might occur during a repair.

If there is too much motion, NASA engineers may have to come up with another solution, like a platform that could be temporarily attached to the outside of the shuttle, to support repair work, Mr. Shannon said.

In a midday briefing, Anthony J. Ceccacci, the lead flight director for the mission, said it would be premature to try to use the first spacewalk to remove the gap filler until the characteristics of riding on the boom were well understood.

"One baby step at a time," he said.

    Seeking Signs of Trouble, NASA Studies Shuttle Images, NYT, 8.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/08/science/space/08shuttle.html

Astronauts Bring Supplies to Space Station

July 7, 2006
Filed at 10:28 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) -- It was moving day Friday for the crew of Discovery, which transferred thousands of pounds of supplies and cargo from the space shuttle to the international space station.

The astronauts moved a huge cargo container, nicknamed Leonardo, onto the space station by robotic arm. Among the goodies awaiting the space station crew were a new stationary bicycle for exercise, an oxygen generator that will eventually allow the space station to support six inhabitants, a machine that cools the station's cabin air and a lab freezer for scientific samples.

''Have fun putting a new room on the station today -- the float-in closet, every home needs one,'' flight controllers in Houston wrote the shuttle crew in their daily morning electronic message.

Unloading items 220 miles above Earth was even more difficult than moving into a house since at least there's gravity on the ground, Steve Lindsey, Discovery's commander, said in interviews with reporters on the ground.

''It's really kind of a challenge because you're in zero-G ... you've got to go very, very slow because if you go fast, you kind of run into things and bump into other equipment,'' Lindsey said. ''It's kind of an interesting choreography we have to go through.''

For the first time in three years, the international space station has three crew members -- European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Reiter on Thursday joined Pavel Vingogradov and Jeff Williams, who marked their 100th day at the space station Friday.

Discovery's six remaining shuttle crew members awoke Friday to a recording of The Beatles' ''Good Day Sunshine,'' a choice of astronaut Lisa Nowak's family.

Nowak and astronaut Stephanie Wilson planned to use the shuttle's robotic arm and an extended boom to take close-up pictures of areas on the orbiter's underside that engineers need more information about to reassure themselves that there's no damage like the kind that doomed Columbia's flight in 2003.

''We've got a couple of really minor problems,'' pilot Mark Kelly told reporters Friday. ''You know they're not significant enough to be called nuisances.''

The boom will look at the shuttle's nose cap area, which eluded earlier photography and may have some bird droppings on it, and three places where gap filler is sticking out, including one protrusion as long as an inch. Gap filler is material fitted between thermal tiles to prevent them from rubbing against each other. Two pieces of gap filler had to be removed from Discovery's belly during a spacewalk last year because of concerns they would cause problems during re-entry.

Engineers also want to look at a panel on the right wing where there appears to be a dark spot in the shape of a claw and another panel where there are two black scuff marks.

The robotic arm and boom were used two days ago to examine the shuttle's nose cap and wings for damage. Before docking Thursday, Lindsey maneuvered the shuttle into a back flip so that the space station's crew could photograph the shuttle's belly and transmit to the images to engineers in Houston.

In their morning message, the flight controllers told the shuttle crew that the shuttle, while docked to the station, wouldn't be able to use a thruster whose heater malfunctioned since its temperature likely was to drop to 60 degrees, about 30 degrees below the use limit.

Flight controllers also told Discovery's crew that they expected NASA managers on Friday to extend the mission by a day to allow for a third spacewalk. That would bring the mission to 13 days.

Columbia's seven astronauts were killed during re-entry when fiery gases entered a breach in the shuttle's wing. The breach was caused by foam hitting its external tank.

------

On the Net:

NASA: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov

    Astronauts Bring Supplies to Space Station, NYT, 7.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Space-Shuttle.html?hp&ex=1152331200&en=417e80b47cb7fe39&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Space Shuttle Does Back Flip and Rendezvous With Station

July 7, 2006
The New York Times
By JOHN SCHWARTZ

HOUSTON, July 6 — The space shuttle Discovery glided Thursday morning to a smooth rendezvous with the International Space Station.

The approach, at a gradual one-tenth of a foot per second as both craft raced through orbit at 17,500 miles an hour, could be seen on NASA Television from a camera mounted in the Discovery's docking mechanism.

"Capture confirmed," the shuttle's commander, Col. Steven W. Lindsey of the Air Force, radioed to mission control at 10:52 a.m. Eastern time, when the two spacecraft joined about 220 miles above Earth, south of Pitcairn Island in the South Pacific. By 12:30 p.m., the crews had opened the hatch separating them and exchanged handshakes and hugs.

An hour before docking, the Discovery, in its second full day in orbit, did a back flip of greeting as it approached the space station. During the maneuver, in which Colonel Lindsey pulled up the nose of the craft at three degrees per second, the 122-foot-long, 245,000-pound shuttle turned as gracefully as a gymnast, though an extremely large one.

That gave crew members on the station, Pavel V. Vinogradov of Russia and Col. Jeffrey N. Williams of the United States Army, the flight engineer, a leisurely view of the bottom of the Discovery so they could take 350 highly detailed photographs of it. The flip was part of the program of inspection put in place after the 2003 Columbia disaster, when an undetected hole in the left wing caused that shuttle to break up during re-entry, killing all seven astronauts on board. It was only the second time that the maneuver had been performed.

Colonel Lindsey executed the maneuver with the help of a small thruster, known as a Vernier, that developed a balky thermostat last week.

The problem had threatened to delay the mission, but NASA elected to launch without fixing the thruster, saying the astronauts could maneuver without it. Once in orbit, Colonel Lindsey kept the left side of the shuttle facing the sun, which warmed the craft and brought the thruster up to operating temperature.

The coast of Spain was clearly visible beneath the Discovery as the maneuver began, and the hills and clouds slid by underneath.

Thomas Reiter, a German astronaut aboard the Discovery, officially joined the station's crew, bringing its complement to three for the first time since the Columbia disaster.

Anthony J. Ceccacci, the lead flight director for the mission, said at an afternoon briefing for reporters that the mission was going according to plan — so much so, in fact, that it threatened to become a bit dull.

"It's boring to us that it's quiet," he said. "But that's a good thing. That means everything is going well."

Still, mission managers will be discussing several issues. Two pieces of stiff cloth that fit between tiles, which are known as gap fillers, are poking up from between tiles on the left wing and toward the rear of the shuttle. Since any protruding object can cause unusual heating during re-entry, the managers will discuss whether the fillers constitute a threat and need to be removed.

John Shannon, deputy manager of the shuttle program, noted that a breakaway patch of thin foam that he described yesterday as being 8 inches by 10 inches was actually more than 12 by 14. That larger patch was still within the range that the agency expected to see, Mr. Shannon said, and did not constitute a threat.

On Friday, the shuttle crew will transfer an Italian-made cargo carrier, known as Leonardo, from the shuttle to the station so that the 5,000 pounds of supplies inside can be loaded into the station.

During the early afternoon briefing on Thursday, Mr. Ceccacci also talked about Mr. Reiter's "seat liner," the soft shell that is tailored to the astronauts' bodies so they are not injured on the rough ride back to Earth. It was transferred to the space station along with him.

When reporters asked Mr. Ceccacci whether the lack of seat liners for the shuttle astronauts meant that they could not return to Earth on a Soyuz in case of orbiter damage, he said that in an emergency, other options always emerged.

"I'll tell you what," he said. "I'd take the chance. I'd wrap myself in bubble wrap if I had to to get home safely."

    Space Shuttle Does Back Flip and Rendezvous With Station, NYT, 7.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/07/science/space/07shuttle.html

NASA Aides Optimistic on Status of Shuttle

July 6, 2006
The New York Times
By JOHN SCHWARTZ and WARREN E. LEARY

HOUSTON, July 5 — NASA engineers and managers expressed optimism Wednesday that the shuttle Discovery had come through its ascent to orbit with no damage and substantially less shedding of foam debris from the external tank than in previous flights.

"People are very excited that they have not been surprised by anything," said John Shannon, shuttle deputy program manager, after a briefing with reporters.

On this second day of its mission, the shuttle raced to catch up with the International Space Station, which it is scheduled to dock with on Thursday at 10:52 a.m. Meanwhile, the astronauts began their detailed inspection of the spacecraft for possible damage and managers revealed detailed photographs of the external tank after it had been set loose from the ascending craft.

Crew members released the shuttle's 50-foot robot arm and used a package of sensors and cameras on the end to check heat shield material on the craft's nose and wings.

Mr. Shannon said that all of the examinations so far had been preliminary, and that far more data would be collected over the next few days as more examinations of the craft followed. On Thursday, for example, the space station crew will take detailed photographs of the shuttle's belly as the craft approaches the station at close range and does a 360-degree pirouette, known as the rotational pitch maneuver.

So Mr. Shannon blended a measure of caution into the briefing.

"We haven't seen anything yet," he said, "but the rotational pitch maneuver is going to tell us a whole bunch about the condition of the exterior of the vehicle."

This was only the second time astronauts have done such a detailed inspection of the outer hull of a shuttle after launching; the first was during the Discovery's flight a year ago to check safety modifications ordered since the Columbia accident.

The Columbia disintegrated on Feb. 1, 2003, while returning to Earth because of damage to a wing caused by pieces of insulating foam that fell from the external fuel tank and struck the shuttle during launching. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration then grounded the shuttle fleet and spent more than $1 billion to redesign the orbiters, focusing on stopping large chunks of foam from breaking away during launchings.

Some large pieces fell off during the Discovery's flight last year, prompting more redesign and delay.

Several areas on the external tank did lose some foam, Mr. Shannon said, including an area about the size of a sheet of notebook paper that appeared to have peeled off in six pieces. But the foam in that area was too thin for the pieces to have significant mass, he said, and they fell off later in the mission than the time when the agency considers such events hazardous to the ship.

Several areas that had shed foam in the past and that had been redesigned did not shed foam this time, he said.

Other issues have cropped up in the early evaluations that appear to be minor, officials said. The photographic sweep revealed that a single strip of stiff felt known as gap filler that sits between insulating tiles was found to be poking out underneath one of the shuttle's wings.

In last year's flight, a gap filler near the nose of the craft caused concern about the possibility that it might cause uneven heating downstream on the craft, and the astronaut Stephen Robinson removed it during a spacewalk. This gap filler does not appear to be in an area that would lead to similar concern, Mr. Shannon said.

Tony Ceccacci, the lead flight director, said at a Wednesday afternoon news briefing that a pattern of unusual white stains had been seen on the shuttle's right wing.

Mr. Ceccacci said that he had seen the splotch in images and that he had seen similar white markings in the same place while inspecting the shuttle on the ground three weeks ago. He added that seen from a distance of 10 feet or so, the markings looked like bird droppings.

"We didn't touch anything, if that's what you're asking," Mr. Ceccacci said to the amusement of reporters.

Imagery experts will study the stain and make a final determination, he said. If the markings are bird droppings, he said, they will burn off during the Discovery's fiery return from space.

John Schwartz reported from Houston for this article, and Warren E. Leary from Florida.

    NASA Aides Optimistic on Status of Shuttle, NYT, 6.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/06/science/space/06shuttle.html

The successful liftoff marked the start of a 12-day mission.

Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

   Shuttle Makes a Safe Return to Space Flight        NYT        5.4.2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/05/science/space/05shuttle.html?hp&ex=
1152158400&en=492d4dbdf3eafb7f&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Shuttle Makes a Safe Return to Space Flight

July 5, 2006
The New York Times
By JOHN SCHWARTZ and WARREN E. LEARY

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., July 4 — The space shuttle Discovery split a nearly cloudless sky with thunder and fire on Tuesday afternoon and roared safely into orbit.

The liftoff, right on schedule at 2:38 p.m., was the start of a 13-day flight that is the first in a year for the diminished shuttle fleet as NASA continues its efforts to resume more frequent human spaceflight.

The Discovery is to rendezvous on Thursday with the International Space Station, where it is carrying equipment, supplies and a fresh astronaut for the station's crew.

But this is also considered the second and final test flight for the shuttle fleet since the loss of the Columbia and its seven astronauts in 2003, and the Discovery's ascent was scrutinized for the kind of liftoff debris that caused that disaster.

At 2 minutes 53 seconds into the flight, an onboard camera showed numerous pieces of debris appearing to fall away from the external fuel tank. They fluttered away and did not appear to strike the shuttle, carrying a crew of seven.

N. Wayne Hale Jr., NASA's shuttle program chief, said the pieces had fallen "after the time we are concerned about," after the air becomes so thin that debris usually floats harmlessly away.

A piece of debris that broke off later in the ascent did appear to strike the midbody of the orbiter, NASA officials said. But they added that it probably did not do any damage.

In all, officials said, insulating foam broke away from five spots on the external fuel tank and a solid rocket booster, some with several pieces of foam.

But none occurred within the time that NASA considers hazardous, and only one piece might be larger than the allowable size. Batteries of cameras on the Discovery and the space station are photographing every square inch of the shuttle's surface during the mission. If serious damage is found, NASA plans call for the crew to abandon the shuttle and seek "safe haven" inside the station until a rescue mission can begin .

NASA officials were jubilant about the liftoff. "They don't get much better than this," said NASA's administrator, Michael D. Griffin, who had been criticized for overruling engineering and safety officials last month after they recommended postponing the mission for more study of debris hazards.

Asked whether he felt vindicated, Mr. Griffin replied that the successful liftoff simply represented good, solid engineering.

"We keep coming back to feelings, you know," he said. "I'll have time for feelings after I'm dead. Right now we're busy."

Originally scheduled for last Saturday, the Discovery's liftoff had been delayed twice by threatening weather. But the Fourth of July dawned with bright skies that all but guaranteed launching, though there were concerns about crosswinds in the hours before liftoff.

As the moment of liftoff neared, NASA's launching director, Michael D. Leinbach, polled the shuttle's support teams for their approval to launch. All gave it.

"Discovery is ready," Mr. Leinbach said. "The weather is beautiful, and America is ready to return to space. Good luck and godspeed."

The shuttle's commander, Col. Steven W. Lindsey of the Air Force, responded, "I can't think of a better place to be than here on the Fourth of July."

Colonel Lindsey then addressed the thousands of spectators along the coast, saying he hoped to give them "a close and personal look at the rockets' red glare."

Then the engines and boosters lifted the craft with a roar into a sky so clear that the flames were visible even when the shuttle had risen more than 60 miles.

The main engines cut off, as planned, at the eight-and-a-half-minute mark, the moment that those familiar with the dangers of ascent are finally able to take a full breath. Soon after, the external tank was released and fell away toward the ocean, and the craft resumed its course toward the space station.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration has had a long road back from the Columbia disaster, when the nation's oldest shuttle broke up over Texas and Louisiana on Feb. 1, 2003, as it returned to the Florida landing strip.

The investigation of the accident found that a 1.67-pound piece of insulating foam had punched a hole in the left wing during the ascent and, moreover, that a "broken safety culture" at NASA had let schedule and budget pressures overcome safety concerns.

Since then, NASA has worked on correcting both problems. Hundreds of millions of dollars were spent on eliminating sources of foam debris from the external tank, and the agency took steps to ensure that dissenting voices were heard.

One year ago, during the Discovery's return-to-flight mission, the external tank shed less foam than before, but several pieces did fall, one weighing nearly a pound.

It did no damage but led the space agency to hold off flying until the problem was better understood and corrected. NASA removed 35 additional pounds of foam from the tank.

Last month, engineering and safety officials recommended against launching because tests showed that small amounts of foam might fall off the ramps that cover brackets along the length of the tank. That insulation protects against ice and frost that build up as humid air condenses on the outside of the fuel tank and is frozen by the supercooled fuel inside it.

The engineers had said a "catastrophic" foam strike was "probable" at some point over 100 shuttle missions.

But Mr. Griffin overruled the managers, saying he disagreed with those characterizations. He noted that the chief risk was to the vehicle and not the crew.

The three shuttles remaining in the national fleet are scheduled to fly 16 more missions to complete work on the half-finished space station; a flight may be added to service the Hubble Space Telescope. President Bush has called for retiring the shuttle fleet by 2010, so NASA will have to return to its historic average of 4.5 missions a year to reach the goal.

During the day of maintenance between the first two attempts and Tuesday's liftoff, the discovery of damaged foam on a bracket that secures the liquid oxygen fuel line to the external tank led engineers to spend a day of intense study and discussion before deciding that the foam did not constitute a risk to the craft or crew.

Once in orbit, one astronaut, Michael E. Fossum, radioed mission control in Houston to report that the crew had spotted what appeared to be a strip of fabric as long as six feet floating away from the Discovery, about 15 minutes after liftoff.

"It really looked a lot like the FRSI insulation," Mr. Fossum told the managers, referring to part of the heat-resistant blankets that cover the top of the orbiter. (The acronym, pronounced "frizzy," stands for flexible reusable surface insulation.)

But NASA managers determined that it was not insulation but harmless ice.

The Discovery is to continue testing scores of modifications made since the loss of the Columbia, including ways to inspect and repair potential damage to the shuttle's heat shield. On the way to the station, the astronauts are to spend most of their second day in space using the shuttle's 50-foot robot arm, with a 50-foot boom tipped with a camera and laser imager, to inspect heat-protecting materials on the orbiter's underside, nose and wings.

On the third day of flight, the shuttle will approach the station for docking. Before the linkup, Colonel Lindsey will stop the craft about 600 feet away and perform a back-flip maneuver to pitch the 100-ton orbiter nose-up, allowing the station crew to take detailed pictures of the bottom with still cameras.

A week of joint operations are planned. The Discovery will transfer tons of supplies and new equipment carried in an Italian-made module called Leonardo.

The mission will feature two spacewalks, and possibly three. The first two will involve station repairs and adding equipment. If controllers determine that the Discovery has enough power and oxygen for an extra day at the station, the astronauts will venture out for a third time to test experimental methods that might be used to repair potential damage to the shuttle's wing and nose heat shields.

Officials said Tuesday that they hoped to launch Atlantis as early as Aug. 28 to resume space-station construction.

    Shuttle Makes a Safe Return to Space Flight, NYT, 5.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/05/science/space/05shuttle.html?hp&ex=1152158400&en=492d4dbdf3eafb7f&ei=5094&partner=homepage

The launch, the first-ever space shuttle launch on Independence Day, was the Discovery's 32nd trip into orbit.

Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

 Shuttle Makes a Safe Return to Space Flight        NYT        5.4.2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/05/science/space/05shuttle.html?hp&ex=
1152158400&en=492d4dbdf3eafb7f&ei=5094&partner=homepage

NASA Launches Space Shuttle Discovery

July 4, 2006
The New York Times
By WARREN E. LEARY and JOHN SCHWARTZ

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., July 4 — NASA launched the space shuttle Discovery today despite having learned on Monday that a small piece of foam had fallen off the external tank, officials said.

"We're 'go' to continue with the launch countdown," said William H. Gerstenmaier, the associate administrator for space operations."

NASA officials said this morning that forecasts indictead there was only a 20 percent chance that weather conditions could interfere with liftoff, which was set for 2:37 p.m.

The small piece of foam insulation, which fell off a bracket that holds a fuel line in place, weighs less than one-tenth of an ounce, about as much as a penny, and would not have caused serious damage to the shuttle if it had fallen off during ascent, said John Shannon, deputy manager of the shuttle program.

NASA engineers and officials spent the day trying to determine, among other things, whether the remaining foam would stay in place and whether the missing foam might cause ice to form on the bracket that could fall and damage the shuttle.

At an afternoon briefing with reporters at the Kennedy Space Center, John Chapman, the external tank manager, said the loss of some foam did not automatically mean that the vehicle was unsafe.

Still, the decision is likely to raise concerns among those who worry that the space agency has let safety standards slip in the face of pressure to launch the shuttle.

Mr. Gerstenmaier said "launch fever" was not part of the decision. "We've laid out the data," he said. "We've looked at it calmly. We're ready to go fly because we're ready to go fly. We're not ready to fly because of some launch window, or some other condition."

In recent briefings, NASA officials have suggested that some reporters had overblown the risks of shedding foam, especially in the broader context of the risks of space flight.

If the mass of a piece of foam from the tank is small, Mr. Gerstenmaier said in a briefing last week, "that could be absolutely no concern to us," even if the surface area of the lost foam was 85 square inches.

The shuttle Columbia was destroyed on re-entry in February 2003, and its crew was killed, after a much larger piece of insulation, weighing 1.67 pounds, fell and damaged its heat shield. NASA grounded the fleet and spent more than $1 billion trying to correct insulation problems.

Several NASA employees said that in the past a piece of foam of the size that fell from the tank this time would not have raised concerns. The launching has been delayed two times because of the weather.

"I think it would not have gotten as much attention prior to Columbia as it is getting now," Mr. Shannon said. "I think it is a very good thing that we have the sensitivity, and we're looking this close at the vehicle."

In the afternoon briefing, managers seemed inclined to move toward launching without a close-up inspection, which would have required an extra day. They argued that the inspection team, working 25 feet from the structure that flanks the shuttle, had tools like borescopes that could help examine the tank for damage at a distance.

Ultimately, Mr. Gerstenmaier said, a plastic pipe extension for the borescope camera allowed an examination to take place from about a foot away, and so several inspectors get a close look. "We actually got data that's as good or better than we could have gotten by delaying," he said.

Though the discussion was lively, Mr. Gerstenmaier said, no one on the mission management team or the shuttle astronauts, who were listening in, dissented from the decision. The NASA administrator, Michael Griffin, listened "intently" to the discussion, he said, but "didn't raise any questions or comments."

In recent weeks, Mr. Griffin, overruled his own chief engineer and safety officer, who wanted to delay launching until more work could be done to resolve the foam problems.

On the first day of trying to launch the craft, managers decided that it was safe to fly despite problems that would probably have made one of the 44 on-orbit thrusters inoperable.

John M. Logsdon, director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University, said he was not troubled by the notion that the shuttle might fly with missing foam.

Dr. Logsdon, a member of the independent board that investigated the Columbia disaster, said, "Prior to Columbia, we flew 113 times with foam apparently falling off without it hurting us."

At the time, he said, NASA did not understand the problem.

"Now that we are aware of it and have learned about it," he said, "it's more reasonable to fly with falling foam, because we at least understand the issue better."

The triangular chunk of foam that fell to the launch pad below is about four inches long and looks "like this small piece of bread crust," Mr. Shannon said at the briefing. It was found on a routine inspection, he said.

The bracket is designed to allow some movement as the extreme cold of liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen shrinks and flexes the tank and the supply line. NASA officials said the rain on Sunday caused ice to form in a nook in the bracket assembly. The ice then pinched the foam when the structure moved, causing the foam to crack and fall off.

The insulating foam that gives the external fuel tank its eye-catching orange color has been a source of risk and consternation since the beginning of the shuttle program.

The foam is necessary to prevent ice from forming on the tank, which contains hundreds of thousands of gallons of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. Falling ice could damage the shuttle. But as NASA saw from the Columbia disaster, falling foam can be a danger, too.

On the lone shuttle flight since then, by the Discovery a year ago, the shedding of foam was greatly reduced, but pieces did break free that could have damaged the heat shield. That prompted NASA to address the problem again, including removing more than 35 pounds of foam and making other changes.

The Discovery and its crew of seven had planned to take off on a 12-day test flight on Saturday, but the mission was put off to Sunday and then to Tuesday because of storms.

    NASA Launches Space Shuttle Discovery, NYT, 4.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/04/science/space/04cnd-shuttle.html?hp&ex=1152072000&en=ef84621fa57e027d&ei=5094&partner=homepage

The seven-member crew arrived at the launching pad shortly after 11 a.m.
and was strapped into the shuttle more than two hours before liftoff.

Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

 Shuttle Makes a Safe Return to Space Flight        NYT        5.4.2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/05/science/space/05shuttle.html?hp&ex=
1152158400&en=492d4dbdf3eafb7f&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Profiles of the Discovery Astronauts

July 4, 2006
The New York Times

•Steven W. Lindsey

ROLE Mission commander.

RANK Colonel, Air Force.

AGE 45.

HOMETOWN Born in Arcadia, Calif., but considers Temple City, Calif. his home.

FAMILY Married, three children.

He has been in space on three previous missions and thinks this flight to the International Space Station may be his last.

"I think I'm done," he said in noting that NASA has many astronauts who have not yet flown. "My job will be done about an hour after I walk off the vehicle," he said, "But I'll be going on to something else, and I'm okay with that."

Col. Lindsey joined NASA in 1995 after 13 years in the Air Force as a pilot and instructor. He flew shuttle missions in 1997, 1998 and 2001, including serving as the pilot of the Discovery flight that returned John Glenn to space in 1998.

He is an Air Force Academy graduate, holding a master's degree in aeronautical engineering from the Air Force Institute of Technology. He has logged more than 5,000 flying hours in more than 50 types of aircraft.

•Mark E. Kelly

ROLE Pilot.

RANK Commander, Navy.

AGE 42.

HOMETOWN Born in Orange, N.J., but considers West Orange, N.J., his home.

FAMILY Unmarried, two daughters.

Commander Kelly served as the pilot on Endeavour in 2001 during a shuttle flight to the International Space Station.

A graduate of the Merchant Marine Academy, he said a sea voyage from Seattle to Egypt that took months got him to look at airplanes as a career choice. "Being at sea at 12 knots was just too slow," he said.

He became a naval pilot in 1987 and served on two deployments to the Persian Gulf, including flying 39 combat missions in Operation Desert Storm. After earning a master's degree in aeronautical engineering from the Naval Postgraduate School, he joined NASA as a pilot in 1996.

Commander Kelly is scheduled to direct spacewalks by other astronauts on this mission, and said he would like to make such an excursion himself someday, perhaps if he gets a posting on the space station.

•Michael E. Fossum

ROLE Mission Specialist.

RANK Colonel, Air Force Reserves.

AGE 48.

HOMETOWN Born in Sioux Falls, S.D., grew up in McAllen, Texas.

FAMILY Married, four children.

A former Eagle Scout, Mr. Fossum is the first Texas A&M graduate in space, and he said before the mission that he planned to carry a university flag with him and then donate it to his alma mater.

Mr. Fossum, who has master's degrees in systems engineering from the Air Force Institute of Technology and space science from the University of Houston, served on active duty in the Air Force from 1980 to 1992.

He resigned from the Air Force to join NASA as an engineer in 1993, hoping it would help him fulfill a life-long dream of becoming an astronaut. He applied eight times and was selected in 1998.

"I love this business, the exploration business," he said.

Mr. Fossum said he and his wife were aware of the risk of space flight, but accepted it. "Nothing is inherently safe about sitting on 4-and-a-half million pounds of explosives," he said.

In addition to flying in space for the first time on this mission, he will also make two and possibly three spacewalks.

As a child, one of Mr. Fossum's favorite books was one on the Apollo program in which he wrote, "I too am going to the stars." He found the book again several years ago and said he thought: "My goodness. Look what you wrote!"

•Piers J. Sellers

ROLE Mission Specialist.

AGE 51.

HOMETOWN Crowborough, Sussex, England.

FAMILY Married, two children.

A veteran astronaut, Mr. Sellers flew on the shuttle Atlantis in 2002 on an International Space Station mission, performing three construction spacewalks. Mr. Sellers is to lead two spacewalks, and a possible third, during Discovery's mission.

On one, he and Mr. Fossum will stand on the end of a robot arm and an attached boom 100 feet above the shuttle. "You're at the end of a long, spindly fishing rod," he said. "As an experience, it will be very different, but I don't think it will be more dangerous."

Mr. Sellers is a graduate of the University of Edinburgh in Scotland and holds a doctorate in biometeorology from Leeds University. He did research around the world in computer modeling of climate systems before moving to the United States and becoming a citizen in 1991. He joined NASA in 1996.

"When I was a kid, I thought of the beauty of just being there in space," he said. "When you do a space flight, you go back to being seven again."

•Lisa M. Nowak

ROLE Mission Specialist.

RANK Commander, Navy.

AGE 43.

HOMETOWN Washington; reared in Rockville, Md.

FAMILY Married, three children.

Commander Nowak's duties aboard Discovery include being a primary operator of the shuttle's robot arm and helping to load and unload the cargo carrier in its bay. After endless hours of practice, she said, the biggest problem could be too much confidence.

"The biggest challenge is not to be complacent," she said. "A lot of the robotics is preprogrammed, and your job is to stop it if something unexpected happens. You have to stay alert."

The mission was a long time coming for Commander Nowak and others, including a crewmate, Stephanie Wilson, who joined the astronaut corps in 1996, following the Challenge accident.

"I never thought that I wouldn't get a flight," she said, "I never got frustrated."

She said she enjoyed her other NASA work, including working as a communicator with shuttle crews at Mission Control and traveling to Canada and Japan to study and work on robotics.

A U.S. Naval Academy graduate, she earned a master's degree in aeronautical engineering from the Naval Postgraduate School. One personal item she took into orbit is her grandmother's engagement ring, which she said she would pass on to her two daughters. "It will be an even more treasured family heirloom."

•Stephanie D. Wilson

ROLE Mission Specialist.

RANK Civilian.AGE 39

HOMETOWN Boston.

FAMILY Unmarried.

"It's been a long road," said Ms. Wilson, a Harvard graduate who got her master's degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Texas. She said she expected to fly earlier, but does not regret her decision to become an astronaut, even though she had been happy working as an engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

"I'm happy to have one flight," she said.

Along with Commander Nowak, she will operate Discovery's 50-foot robotic arm, attached to a 50-foot boom, during inspections for any damage to the shuttle. She also will supervise moving supplies from a cargo module carried by Discovery to the space station.

Ms. Wilson said her parents taught her that education was the door to opportunity, and she always enjoyed school. "I studied, and it really wasn't hard to get good grades," she said.

Interest in space and science budded after a career awareness class at Taconic High School in Pittsfield, Mass. After interviewing a college astronomy professor, she was hooked.

•Thomas Reiter

ROLE European Space Agency astronaut.

RANK Civilian.AGE 48.

HOMETOWN Frankfurt am Main, Germany

FAMILY Married, two sons.

"We have been waiting for quite some time," said Mr. Reiter, who is traveling to the International Space Station aboard Discovery and will remain there.

He will be the first astronaut from the European Space Agency, a major partner in the station project, to stay for an extended period.

Mr. Reiter, who is to spend at least six months in space, said that adding a third astronaut after two years with just two people on the station will increase the chances to do more science.

A former test pilot with a master's degree in aerospace technology and an E.S.A. astronaut since 1992, he is not new to long stays in space. Mr. Reiter spent six months in the mid-1990's on Russia's Mir space station and performed two spacewalks.

Mr. Reiter's wife and two sons have packed him a surprise package that he is not to open until he begins his long-term stay. "I'm curious to see what they got for me, what I'm getting at the space station," he said before the flight. "But I can wait."

    Profiles of the Discovery Astronauts, NYT, 4.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/04/science/space/04cnd-astros.html

Space Shuttle Discovery Lifts Off

July 4, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 2:47 p.m. ET
The New York Times

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) -- After two weather delays and last-minute foam trouble, Discovery and a crew of seven blasted off Tuesday on the first shuttle launch in a year, flying over objections from those within NASA who argued for more fuel-tank repairs.

The majestic shot -- NASA's first on Independence Day -- was only the second shuttle flight since the Columbia was brought down 3 1/2 years ago by a chunk of insulation foam breaking off the fuel tank.

The foam problem resurfaced during last July's flight of Discovery and again Monday, keeping the space agency debating safety all the way up to the eve of liftoff.

Discovery thundered away from its seaside pad at 2:38 p.m.

Commander Steven Lindsey, an Air Force fighter pilot, was at the controls and aiming for a linkup in two days with the international space station. Earlier, he and his crew waved small American flags on their way to the rocketship.

''Discovery's ready, the weather's beautiful, America is ready to return the space shuttle to flight. So good luck and Godspeed, Discovery,'' launch director Mike Leinbach said just before liftoff.

''I can't think of a better place to be here on the Fourth of July,'' radioed Lindsey. ''For all the folks on the Florida east coast, we hope to very soon get you an up-close and personal look at the rocket's red glare.''

It was unclear for a while Monday whether Discovery would fly.

A slice of foam, no bigger than a crust of bread, fell off an expansion joint on Discovery's external fuel tank following Sunday's delay. Shuttle managers concluded Monday night after intensive engineering analysis that the remaining foam on that part of the tank was solid.

Engineers said the piece -- 3 inches long and just one-tenth of an ounce -- was too small to pose a threat even if it had come off during launch and smacked the shuttle. Inspectors devised a long pole with a camera on the end to get an up-close look at the joint where the foam came off, and found no evidence of further damage. NASA made sure there was no excessive ice buildup at that spot Tuesday; ice could be even more damaging than foam at liftoff.

''You could mail 10 of these things with the cost of a single first-class stamp,'' NASA Administrator Michael Griffin said earlier on NBC's ''Today.'' We're talking about a very, very minor piece of foam here. ... This is not an issue.''

The fallen foam, albeit harmless, added to the tension already surrounding this mission.

NASA's chief engineer and top-ranking safety official objected two weeks ago to launching Discovery on the 12-day station delivery mission, without first eliminating the lingering dangers from foam loss, considered probable and potentially catastrophic.

They were overruled by shuttle managers and, ultimately, by Griffin. He stressed the need to get on with building the half-done, long-overdue space station before the shuttles are retired in 2010 to make way for a moonship, per President Bush's orders.

Griffin said he welcomed the debate over Discovery's launch and acknowledged that the space agency plays the odds with every shuttle liftoff.

''If foam hits the orbiter and doesn't damage it, I'm going to say ho-hum because I know we're going to release foam. The goal is to make sure that the foam is of a small enough size that I know we're not going to hurt anything,'' Griffin said in a weekend interview with The Associated Press.

He added: ''It's hardly the only thing that poses a risk to a space shuttle mission.''

If photos during launch or the flight show serious damage to Discovery, the crew could move into the space station. Then a risky shuttle rescue -- fraught with its own problems -- would have to be mounted. The rescue ship, Atlantis, would face the same potential foam threat at launch.

Many have speculated that if anything happens to Discovery or its five-man, two-woman crew, the shuttle program may well end with this mission. And President Bush's plans for moon and Mars exploration could be put in jeopardy.

The unprecedented controversy of flying foam put a cloud over NASA's second attempt since Columbia to get the shuttle program back on track. In its flight last July, Discovery also experienced dangerous foam loss. But the foam chunk was smaller than the one that slammed into Columbia's left wing, and it missed Discovery altogether.

Just like a year ago, more than 100 cameras and radar were trained on Discovery at liftoff to spot any foam coming off the fuel tank and impacting the shuttle. The intensive picture-taking was to continue with on-board cameras during the entire eight-minute climb to space, with the astronauts poised to snap zoom-in shots of the tank immediately upon reaching orbit.

NASA figures it will be nearly a week before it can decisively say whether Discovery was hit and damaged by foam during launch. And it will be a week-and-a-half before engineers can conclude whether any pieces of space junk struck the shuttle in orbit and caused irreparable damage.

Last July, the suite of cameras caught a 1-pound slice of foam falling off Discovery's fuel tank two minutes after liftoff, despite extensive repairs and analyses following the Columbia disaster. The big piece of foam came off an area untouched in the wake of the tragedy. Smaller pieces popped off other parts of the 154-foot tank.

Over the past year, NASA removed the foam from the location of last year's largest foam loss, saying it represented the biggest aerodynamic change to the shuttle in 25 years of flight. Engineers deemed the foam there unnecessary.

Shuttle managers put off repairs to another potentially dangerous area of the tank, foam wedges to insulate the metal brackets that hold pressurized lines in place. The foam prevents ice and frost from forming on the brackets once the tank is filled with supercold fuel.

Managers said they wanted to make one major change at a time. The space agency's chief engineer disagreed as did the chief safety officer, saying they would rather take the extra six months to fix the problem before launching.

Adding to the appearance of conflict, NASA is refusing to publicly release the documents of those flight readiness meetings as it did a year ago, saying it would prevent employees from speaking frankly in the future.

Griffin contends NASA doesn't have time to spare given that the three remaining shuttles are scheduled to be phased out in 2010 and replaced by a new spaceship intended to return astronauts to the moon in the next decade.

Riding aboard Discovery is German astronaut Thomas Reiter, who will move into the space station for a half-year stay. He carried a small German flag out to the launch pad.

Two astronauts, an American and a Russian, are already living on the station; Reiter will expand the size of the station crew to three for the first time since 2003. Staffing was scaled back in the wake of the Columbia disaster because of the lack of shuttle supply flights.

Besides Lindsey and Reiter, Discovery is carrying pilot Mark Kelly; Michael Fossum and Piers Sellers, who will conduct at least two spacewalks at the station; and Lisa Nowak and Stephanie Wilson.

Tuesday's guest list was smaller than for the previous two launch tries. Some family members of the perished Columbia astronauts remained for the liftoff.

Beginning Wednesday, Discovery's astronauts will survey the shuttle beginning for any damage from foam, ice or other debris, using a 50-foot inspection boom that will be attached to the ship's 50-foot robot arm, and test the stability of the boom by putting a spacewalker on the end of it. They also will make repairs to the space station and deliver much-needed supplies.

On the Net:

NASA: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov

    Space Shuttle Discovery Lifts Off, NYT, 4.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Space-Shuttle.html

NASA Shows Off Tool That Helped Save Planned July 4 Launch

July 4, 2006
The New York Times
By JOHN SCHWARTZ

Three of the NASA employees who saved the planned July 4 launch of the shuttle Discovery showed off the tool that did the trick this morning.

When a crack was discovered in the insulating foam that keeps the shuttle's external fuel tank from icing over, NASA engineers had to decide whether the small piece that broke off — less than four inches long and roughly the weight of a penny — was a sign of bigger problems.

The engineers needed to examine the place where the foam fell away, to determine whether more and larger pieces could be shed and strike the shuttle orbiter during ascent. But their view of the damaged spot, on an oxygen feed line bracket, was obscured by other parts of the shuttle, and it could not be seen from the tower standing next to the vehicle.

Ordinarily, getting an inspector up close to the bracket would mean setting up a platform and postponing maintenance work while the inspection took place, perhaps delaying the launch by a full day.

About noon on Monday, however, one of the NASA engineers working on the problem checked in with the Micro Inspection Team, a 13-member group that has expertise in getting a good look at inaccessible parts of the shuttle.

"They thought we'd be able to do what they wanted to do, and it turned out that we did," said Brad Smith, a member of the team.

The tool, known as a borescope, is a kind of camera, a 15-foot-long fiber optic bundle with a lens on the end. It is usually used to examine things like the insides of fuel lines, to see if any tiny scraps of metal or other impurities are there that could be dangerous — "any areas of the orbiter that you cannot put a eyeball on," said Jeff Rowell, a member of the team.

But the $50,000 tool had never been used to look at foam while the shuttle was on the launch pad.

The fiber optic cable cannot support its own weight, so technicians slid the borescope into a bendable 6-foot-long tube that retains its shape.

Standing on a platform of the tower, Mr. Rowell said, they "had to snake around to the side of the feed line" to get a good look. "We were fully extended, plus all of my arm," said Mr. Rowell, who had leaned out over a small piece of rope at the edge of the platform 207 feet above the ground, secured only by a safety harness.

"The view we gave them was at least as good as you could have gotten with your eye," he said, referring to colleagues who were watching the output images from the borescope. "There was no more foam damage."

Images NASA shared with reporters last night showed minute details on the foam, including inspection stamps. Based in part on those images, NASA officials decided yesterday that the launch could go ahead today despite the crack in the foam.

    NASA Shows Off Tool That Helped Save Planned July 4 Launch, NYT, 4.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/04/science/space/04cnd-tool.html


 

Shuttle Launching Set Despite Broken Foam

July 4, 2006
The New York Times
By WARREN E. LEARY and JOHN SCHWARTZ

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., July 3 — NASA will try to launch the space shuttle Discovery on Tuesday despite having learned on Monday that a small piece of foam had fallen off the external tank, officials said.

"We're 'go' to continue with the launch countdown," said William H. Gerstenmaier, the associate administrator for space operations." Liftoff was set for 2:37 p.m.

The small piece of foam insulation, which fell off a bracket that holds a fuel line in place, weighs less than one-tenth of an ounce, about as much as a penny, and would not have caused serious damage to the shuttle if it had fallen off during ascent, said John Shannon, deputy manager of the shuttle program.

NASA engineers and officials spent the day trying to determine, among other things, whether the remaining foam would stay in place and whether the missing foam might cause ice to form on the bracket that could fall and damage the shuttle.

At an afternoon briefing with reporters at the Kennedy Space Center, John Chapman, the external tank manager, said the loss of some foam did not automatically mean that the vehicle was unsafe.

Still, the decision is likely to raise concerns among those who worry that the space agency has let safety standards slip in the face of pressure to launch the shuttle.

Mr. Gerstenmaier said "launch fever" was not part of the decision. "We've laid out the data," he said. "We've looked at it calmly. We're ready to go fly because we're ready to go fly. We're not ready to fly because of some launch window, or some other condition."

In recent briefings, NASA officials have suggested that some reporters had overblown the risks of shedding foam, especially in the broader context of the risks of space flight.

If the mass of a piece of foam from the tank is small, Mr. Gerstenmaier said in a briefing last week, "that could be absolutely no concern to us," even if the surface area of the lost foam was 85 square inches.

The shuttle Columbia was destroyed on re-entry in February 2003, and its crew was killed, after a much larger piece of insulation, weighing 1.67 pounds, fell and damaged its heat shield. NASA grounded the fleet and spent more than $1 billion trying to correct insulation problems.

Several NASA employees said that in the past a piece of foam of the size that fell from the tank this time would not have raised concerns. The launching has been delayed two times because of the weather.

"I think it would not have gotten as much attention prior to Columbia as it is getting now," Mr. Shannon said. "I think it is a very good thing that we have the sensitivity, and we're looking this close at the vehicle."

In the afternoon briefing, managers seemed inclined to move toward launching without a close-up inspection, which would have required an extra day. They argued that the inspection team, working 25 feet from the structure that flanks the shuttle, had tools like borescopes that could help examine the tank for damage at a distance.

Ultimately, Mr. Gerstenmaier said, a plastic pipe extension for the borescope camera allowed an examination to take place from about a foot away, and so several inspectors get a close look. "We actually got data that's as good or better than we could have gotten by delaying," he said.

Though the discussion was lively, Mr. Gerstenmaier said, no one on the mission management team or the shuttle astronauts, who were listening in, dissented from the decision. The NASA administrator, Michael Griffin, listened "intently" to the discussion, he said, but "didn't raise any questions or comments."

In recent weeks, Mr. Griffin, overruled his own chief engineer and safety officer, who wanted to delay launching until more work could be done to resolve the foam problems.

On the first day of trying to launch the craft, managers decided that it was safe to fly despite problems that would probably have made one of the 44 on-orbit thrusters inoperable.

John M. Logsdon, director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University, said he was not troubled by the notion that the shuttle might fly with missing foam.

Dr. Logsdon, a member of the independent board that investigated the Columbia disaster, said, "Prior to Columbia, we flew 113 times with foam apparently falling off without it hurting us."

At the time, he said, NASA did not understand the problem.

"Now that we are aware of it and have learned about it," he said, "it's more reasonable to fly with falling foam, because we at least understand the issue better."

The triangular chunk of foam that fell to the launch pad below is about four inches long and looks "like this small piece of bread crust," Mr. Shannon said at the briefing. It was found on a routine inspection, he said.

The bracket is designed to allow some movement as the extreme cold of liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen shrinks and flexes the tank and the supply line. NASA officials said the rain on Sunday caused ice to form in a nook in the bracket assembly. The ice then pinched the foam when the structure moved, causing the foam to crack and fall off.

The insulating foam that gives the external fuel tank its eye-catching orange color has been a source of risk and consternation since the beginning of the shuttle program.

The foam is necessary to prevent ice from forming on the tank, which contains hundreds of thousands of gallons of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. Falling ice could damage the shuttle. But as NASA saw from the Columbia disaster, falling foam can be a danger, too.

On the lone shuttle flight since then, by the Discovery a year ago, the shedding of foam was greatly reduced, but pieces did break free that could have damaged the heat shield. That prompted NASA to address the problem again, including removing more than 35 pounds of foam and making other changes.

The Discovery and its crew of seven had planned to take off on a 12-day test flight on Saturday, but the mission was put off to Sunday and then to Tuesday because of storms.

    Shuttle Launching Set Despite Broken Foam, NYT, 4.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/04/science/space/04shuttle.html?hp&ex=1152072000&en=f6b3c78b46ad1ffd&ei=5094&partner=homepage

NASA Scrubs Shuttle Liftoff for 2nd Day Over Storms

July 3, 2006
The New York Times
By JOHN SCHWARTZ and WARREN E. LEARY

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., July 2 — NASA scrubbed the launching of the shuttle Discovery on Sunday for the second day in a row as thunderstorms and clouds cloaked the Kennedy Space Center.

"We decided to terminate the count today, stand down for 48 hours," Michael D. Leinbach, the launching director, told Col. Steven W. Lindsey of the Air Force, the shuttle's commander, at 1:15 p.m., a little more than two hours before the scheduled liftoff. All seven astronauts had entered the Discovery, but workers had not yet closed the hatch.

"Yeah, we copy," Colonel Lindsey replied, "and looking out the window, it doesn't look good today, and we think that's a great plan."

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration will hold off launching until Tuesday at 2:38 p.m., with the extra day to keep the shuttle astronauts and crews fresh and to replenish the fuel cells, which provide electrical power to the orbiter.

Topping off the fuel cells on Monday will allow managers to keep an option of extending the 12-day mission by a day, which would be used for a spacewalk to practice repair techniques for the shuttle's delicate tiles and heat panels.

At a news conference after the decision to delay the mission, John Shannon, deputy manager of the shuttle program, said, "The one thing we really don't control, weather, kept us from launching."

Mr. Leinbach said NASA could try again on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday before having to shut down operations for three or four days to replenish fuels.

The time window, dictated by the space center's position in relation to the orbital plane of the International Space Station, closes on July 19. After that, the mission would have to be postponed until late August. The cost of the postponements on Saturday and Sunday, including the price of lost fuels and worker overtime for the weekend and holiday, is about $1 million each, Mr. Leinbach said.

A weather officer said that Tuesday could be a better day for launching. "Monday looked very similar to today," said First Lt. Kaleb Nordgren of the 45th Weather Squadron of the Air Force. "On Tuesday, the situation changes. We have much lighter upper-level winds, which decreases the chances of getting thunderstorms."

The storms rolled through the area from the morning on. Three and a half hours before the scheduled liftoff, the Kennedy Space Center went into a "Phase II" lightning warning, which means lightning has occurred within five miles of the site.

But mission officials remained hopeful, if not optimistic, and had crew members begin the long process of strapping into their seats around noon.

Postponements due to weather can be difficult for a shuttle crew, said Col. Eileen M. Collins, the commander of the last shuttle mission, a year ago.

"It's disappointing to have a weather scrub," said Colonel Collins, who has since retired from the space agency and the Air Force. But she added that the astronauts were too busy to feel much emotion until they were out of the shuttle and heading back to crew quarters.

Colonel Collins led a mission in July 1999 that was postponed because of thunderstorms. "You're kind of revved up for the launch," she said.

Still, "laying on your back as long as you do can be pretty painful," she continued. "It takes a lot out of you."

    NASA Scrubs Shuttle Liftoff for 2nd Day Over Storms, NYT, 3.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/03/science/space/03shuttle.html?hp&ex=1151985600&en=75822a89154af6af&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Clouds Force Delay of Shuttle Launching

for at Least a Day

July 1, 2006
The New York Times
By JOHN SCHWARTZ and WARREN E. LEARY

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., July 1 — NASA scrubbed the launching of the shuttle Discovery minutes before its scheduled liftoff Saturday as threatening clouds encroached on the 20-mile boundary around the Kennedy Space Center.

The postponement came on the first day of a 19-day launching window, just before the start of a 10-minute span in which the launching pad enters the same orbital plane as the International Space Station.

Liftoff is now scheduled for a 10-minute window starting at 3:26 p.m. on Sunday, but current weather forecasts put the likelihood of adverse conditions at 70 percent.

Conditions for Monday, according to forecasters working with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, are likely to be even worse.

The 12-day flight to the space station is to be the second mission for the Discovery since the loss of the shuttle Columbia and its crew of seven when it broke apart while re-entering the atmosphere on Feb. 1, 2003.

Delays have always been part of the space program because of the complexity of spaceflight technology and the vagaries of weather.

Hopes at NASA for good weather were high throughout the morning, which dawned bright and relatively clear. Dozens of government officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, came to the space center for the launching.

All morning, the issue causing more concern than the weather was a heater for one of the shuttle's six small thrusters that was not operating properly. But mission officials decided to work around that problem and launch anyway, since shuttle pilots are trained to work without all six thrusters.

Storms are another matter, however, and NASA does not launch when anvil-shaped clouds are near because of the potential for lightning.

A single anvil cloud began to dissipate before 3 p.m., but others began massing behind it. At 3:15, half an hour before the scheduled liftoff at 3:49, Bruce Buckingham, a NASA spokesman, announced, "We are still no go for weather."

The clouds near the launching site began to dissipate, but clouds massed over the landing strip — another condition that prohibits liftoff because good visibility there is needed in case the flight is aborted soon after liftoff and the shuttle has to be brought back to the Kennedy landing site. Two minutes before the countdown was to resume, Michael Leinbach, the launching director, decided to delay resuming it to see if the weather would clear before the day's window closed. Though the seven astronauts had been strapped into their seats in the shuttle, with the hatch shut at 2 p.m., the mission managers gave the order to cancel liftoff at 3:42.

Mr. Leinbach apologized to the commander, Col. Steven W. Lindsey of the Air Force. "Sorry to break your string," he said, "but we're not going to launch today." Mr. Leinbach added, "We're going to try again tomorrow."

Colonel Lindsey agreed. "We'll launch when we're ready," he said. "Hopefully, tomorrow will look better."

In a brief interview on NASA television, Mr. Leinbach said, "We played it till the end," but ran out of time.

"We can't control the weather, and we have very strict rules," he said. "It was very disappointing for the entire launch team."

But he added, "We're not going to launch the vehicle unless it's safe."

Normally, NASA waits a day after two unsuccessful launching attempts to give the astronauts, ground crew and mission controllers the rest that allows them to remain sharp; two more consecutive days of launch attempts would follow. If the shuttle cannot be launched before July 19, the next window opens in August.

Mr. Cheney, who was at Cape Canaveral with his wife and three granddaughters, said he was disappointed, according to Reuters.

"I was really looking forward to today, especially looking forward to having my grandkids here," he said. "But it was not to be today. Maybe it will work tomorrow."

    Clouds Force Delay of Shuttle Launching for at Least a Day, NYT, 1.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/01/science/space/02shuttle.html

Discovery's 'Pedestrian Mission' Means a Lot to NASA

July 1, 2006
The New York Times
By JOHN SCHWARTZ and WARREN E. LEARY

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., July 1 — The space shuttle Discovery and its seven astronauts are to roar into orbit this afternoon on what NASA managers called "a rather pedestrian mission" that nevertheless has a great deal riding on it.

Liftoff is scheduled for 3:49, when Earth's rotation will put the launching pad at the Kennedy Space Center here in the orbital plane of the International Space Station, the shuttle's destination.

Weather is still an open question with conditions shifting from favorable to unfavorable throughout the day.

But a last-minute technical problem has cropped up: a heater in the shuttle’s maneuvering system is not working properly. NASA officials have not stopped the countdown for this problem, but if it is not corrected it might cause the launching to be delayed at least one day.

The heater counters the chill of space on one of four thrusters for the left orbital maneuvering system pod.

In an interview this morning, Michael D. Griffin, NASA's administrator, said the agency's experts at Johnson Space Center in Houston were trying to understand the problem, how to fix it and what it would mean for launching.

"I just think we've got to work through the mission rules and see where we are,” he said. “The guys are back at JSC doing that right now. So we'll see."

A different issue that had caused some concern -- whether fuel level sensors that caused a delay in the last flight would act up again -- was not a problem this morning. The sensors passed their test.

The 12-day mission is mainly dedicated mainly to carrying food, water, spare parts, oxygen and other supplies to the International Space Station, along with a new crew member, Thomas Reiter of Germany, who will be the first astronaut from the European Space Agency to serve on the orbiting laboratory for a long term.

But far more important to the future of the space program is the issue of flaws that doomed two previous missions, those of the Challenger in 1986 and the Columbia in 2003. This is only the second flight since the loss of the Columbia and its crew of seven, caused by a 1.67-pound piece of foam that fell from the shuttle's giant external fuel tank during ascent and punched a lethal hole in its left wing.

NASA spent two years redesigning the tank and developed potential repair methods. But shortly after the Discovery's liftoff in its return-to-flight mission a year ago, several smaller but still hazardous pieces of foam fell from the tank.

Andrew S. W. Thomas, an astronaut aboard that flight, recalled in an interview on Friday that as it circled the Earth, "there were people saying, 'We're the last shuttle flight.'"

For that reason, the launching will be closely monitored by batteries of cameras both at the space center and at other locations along the flight path.

There is also an escape plan if damage is detected during the flight. The shuttle would dock at the orbiting space station and the astronauts would move into it for weeks or months until a rescue mission by a second shuttle could be launched.

A combined crew of nine would have to live under relatively cramped conditions in 1,800 square feet of habitable space. (The average new American home is more than 2,400 square feet.) Michael T. Suffredini, the manager for the International Space Station, said that under this "safe haven" plan, the space station was well stocked with the food, water and oxygen that the combined crew would need, with "quite a bit of margin."

But NASA would then be faced with the unhappy prospect of flying another shuttle with the same design flaws that caused the damage on the Discovery flight.

For all of the concerns about falling foam, however, many officials and astronauts say the biggest worries are the oldest ones, most prominently the shuttle's main engines and solid rocket boosters during the crucial, bone-rattling eight and a half minutes of flight before the main engines cut off.

"Flying the shuttle is not without risk for many reasons way beyond foam," Mr. Griffin, the NASA administrator, said Friday at a preflight news conference, "and in fact, I worry that we spend so much time worrying about foam that we won't worry about other things that could get us."

The three main engines burn more than 500,000 gallons of liquid hydrogen and oxygen that is pumped in from the external tank. And while they can at least be turned off if something goes wrong, the two solid rocket boosters flanking the huge fuel tank burn until their propellant is used up.

The initial ascent is "a controlled explosion," said Mike Mullane, a former astronaut, and "the most terrifying part of the flight." By comparison, foam damage is a problem that affects re-entry.

"If I was aboard that rocket," he added, "I wouldn't be thinking at all about re-entry."

A storm on Saturday afternoon, in the 10-minute time window when the launching pad is in alignment with the space station, would force a postponement because of the potential for other kinds of damage.

At the enormous speeds of launching, raindrops become bullets that can damage the shuttle's skin. NASA will not launch if there is rain on the launching pad or in the flight path, if lightning has been detected within 11.5 miles of the pad, or if winds are more than about 34 miles per hour. High anvil-shaped thunderclouds that are likely to produce lightning must be at least 20 miles away.

If weather or a last-minute technical problem causes the space agency to put off the flight on Saturday, a second attempt will take place on Sunday. If the weather proves uncooperative on Sunday — and right now the weather for Sunday looks much like the weather for Saturday, with the same 60 percent chance of a scrub — then NASA will probably stand down until Tuesday.

If problems persist, or if a new issue emerges that requires more study and repair, the current launching window will last until July 19, with the next opportunities coming between Aug. 28 and Sept. 14.

In NASA's preflight review this month, some leading engineers argued against launching the current mission until areas of the fuel tank that still shed small amounts of foam could be redesigned.

But Mr. Griffin overruled the engineers, saying he did not agree with their assertion that a foam incident was "probable" over the life of the program and that the result would be "catastrophic."

He also said that the risk was to the vehicle and not the crew, who could wait aboard the space station for rescue if the shuttle was damaged during ascent, and that he wanted to leave time to complete the 17 missions planned before President Bush's deadline for ending the shuttle program in 2010.

On Friday, Mr. Griffin defended that decision, contrasting the open discussion with the process that led up to the Columbia disaster, in which managers were found to have squelched dissent. This month's preflight review was a healthy exchange of ideas and decision-making about difficult issues, he said, adding, "What you're seeing is a good process."

"I think sometimes people mistake the desire to hear all of the opinions with the ability to agree with all of the opinions," he said. "Agreement is not offered. What is offered is a willingness and a desire to hear, and an obligation to speak."

After the Columbia disaster, NASA was widely accused of letting scheduling pressures override safety concerns. But Mr. Griffin said schedules could not be ignored.

"This may be politically incorrect," he said, "but there are no activities that humans undertake that don't have a schedule associated with them. It matters if you finish a job this year or in the next decade."

Trying to work in 17 flights before 2010, he said, was "a schedule we can meet, but we need to get on with things." And he added:

"I do not think — I absolutely do not think and do not accept — that we are being unduly influenced by schedule pressure. But we pay attention to schedule because time is money, and that matters."

The technical problem that cropped up this morning involves a heater attached to a Vernier thruster toward the back of the shuttle’s left side.

The Verniers are six small, quiet jets used for subtle, fine-tuned maneuvering during rendezvous with the space station and when the crew is sleeping, said Kyle Herring, a NASA spokesman.

Although flight rules call for postponing liftoff if all of the heaters are not working, there is flexibility in applying the rules, he said, adding, "Flight rules are guidelines to be followed, not deities to be worshipped."

NASA officials suggested that there might be ways to work around the problem. The shuttle pilots are trained to maneuver without the fine-tuning capabilities of the Verniers.

    Discovery's 'Pedestrian Mission' Means a Lot to NASA, NYT, 1.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/01/us/01shuttle.html

Camera stops working on Hubble telescope

Sat Jun 24, 2006 8:07 PM ET
Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - One of the main cameras on the aging Hubble Space Telescope, known for its unparalleled views of distant galaxies and infant stars, has stopped working and engineers are studying the problem, scientists said on Saturday.

One of three cameras in the Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys shut down on Monday after indicating that power supply voltages had exceeded their limits, the Space Telescope Science Institute said in a statement.

The exact cause of the problem and a potential fix were under investigation, the statement said. The other two cameras were still operating and engineers were hopeful the problem could be fixed from the ground, an agency scientist said.

"At this point, the ACS is in a safe configuration and further analysis is ongoing," the statement said.

The cameras were installed on Hubble by astronauts on the space shuttle Columbia during a 2002 repair and service mission, one of four repair missions to the telescope named for astronomer Edwin Hubble.

Other shuttle missions to correct problems and replace aging equipment occurred in 1993, 1997 and 1999.

The telescope, launched in 1990, orbits above the distorting effects of Earth's atmosphere, enabling clearer views of astronomical objects.

Hubble needs new batteries for power and new gyroscopes to keep it steady and let it point at specific celestial features. Without maintenance, its capabilities could fade by 2007 or 2008.

NASA has said another repair mission could keep Hubble productive through 2010. Eventually, the telescope will be brought down to Earth in what NASA calls a controlled de-orbit.

    Camera stops working on Hubble telescope, NYT, 24.6.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=scienceNews&storyID=2006-06-25T000716Z_01_N24335989_RTRUKOC_0_US-SCIENCE-HUBBLE.xml

NASA to Launch Discovery on July 1 for 13-Day Mission

June 18, 2006
The New York Times
By WARREN E. LEARY

WASHINGTON, June 17 — After what they called a "spirited discussion," NASA officials decided Saturday to launch the space shuttle Discovery as planned on July 1. It will be only the second flight since the Columbia tragedy.

Concluding a two-day meeting at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida that Michael D. Griffin, administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, said involved "intensive and spirited exchange" over safety issues, shuttle authorities gave a go-ahead to the flight despite the reservations of two senior officials.

Mr. Griffin told a televised news conference from Kennedy that he approved the 13-day flight because he did not feel it presented an undue risk to the seven-member crew, even though issues remained about debris from the shuttle's external fuel tank that could damage the vehicle during launching.

NASA officials said Bryan O'Conner, the agency's lead safety official, and Christopher Scolese, its chief engineer, eventually signed off on the flight plans, but noted their objections about proceeding without fully resolving the debris issue.

Mr. Griffin said NASA gets lots of advice and seriously considers it all. However, he said, when there is not unanimous agreement, he has to make a decision, state his rationale for it, and proceed.

"There were very different viewpoints on the issue of whether we were ready to fly or not," he said. "I can't possibly accept every recommendation given to me by every member of my staff, especially when they all don't agree."

The concern centers on pieces of insulating foam that cover 34 brackets on the tank that secure pipes and wiring. These so-called ice-frost ramps prevent the buildup of ice, another form of hazardous debris that could fall off during launching and damage the shuttle's heat shield. The ramps are being redesigned to reduce their size and hazard potential, but any changes cannot be adapted until at least next spring, said N. Wayne Hale Jr., director of the shuttle program.

Mr. Hale said the largest falling foam hazards had been eliminated from the fuel tank, and although the ice-frost ramps remained a high-risk problem, flight experience suggested they could remain unchanged for a few flights without significantly increasing their chances of causing crucial damage to a shuttle.

Reducing fuel tank debris has been a priority for NASA since the loss of the shuttle Columbia on Feb. 1, 2003. Foam insulation falling from the tank during launching damaged Columbia's heat shield, causing the destruction of the craft and the deaths of seven astronauts as the ship tried to return through the atmosphere from a mission.

NASA spent two years and hundreds of millions of dollars redesigning the tank to reduce foam shedding. However, when Discovery flew last July on the first mission since Columbia, a greatly reduced but hazardous amount of foam still fell from its redesigned tank, including a large, potentially damaging piece.

NASA grounded the fleet, and tank engineers removed more than 37 pounds of foam that formed two air deflectors that protected pressurized fuel lines and cables down the side of the tank, places from which the biggest pieces of foam fell during the last mission.

Mr. Griffin said he wanted shuttles flying soon to get in 16 or 17 missions to finish construction of the International Space Station and service the Hubble Space Telescope before the orbiters are retired in 2010. Delays, he said, will add pressure to rush flights to stay on schedule, which increases safety risks.

If a shuttle is critically damaged during launching, Mr. Griffin said, the crew could make it to the space station to await rescue by another shuttle or a Russian spacecraft. Such an accident would not unduly threaten crew safety, he said, but it probably would end the shuttle program.

"I would be moving to shut the program down," Mr. Griffin said of the loss of another shuttle. "I think, at that point, we're done."

    NASA to Launch Discovery on July 1 for 13-Day Mission, NYT, 18.6.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/18/us/18nasa.html

Still Some Risk, but Shuttle Flight Is Set for July

June 1, 2006
The New York Times
By WARREN E. LEARY

WASHINGTON, May 31 — Although there is still a risk of dangerous foam debris, NASA officials cleared the space shuttle's external fuel tank on Wednesday for launching of the Discovery in July, after a year on the ground.

Shuttle program officials, meeting at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, said enough modifications had been made on the tank since the last shuttle flight to give them confidence that the foam risk was minor.

N. Wayne Hale Jr., manager of the shuttle program, said at a news conference that foam debris from different areas on the fuel tank would continue to come off and pose some risk of damaging a shuttle. But he called the risk "acceptable" and said, "We have eliminated the largest hazards."

Repeating a note often sounded by NASA officials and astronauts, Mr. Hale said the shuttle would always be risky to fly.

Michael D. Leinbach, the shuttle launching director at Kennedy, said the Discovery should be ready to launch within a window lasting from July 1 through July 19. In the approach to that window, managers will have unusually long contingency time, almost two weeks, to deal with problems that might arise.

Mr. Leinbach also said the shuttle Atlantis was on schedule to roll out to its launching pad on July 25 in anticipation of a mission beginning Aug. 28 or shortly thereafter.

NASA wants to fly the shuttle three times before the end of the year to get back on schedule building the International Space Station before the shuttle fleet's retirement in 2010. After 2006, officials hope to fly four missions a year before the deadline.

A reduction in falling fuel tank debris has been a priority for NASA since the loss of the shuttle Columbia, a disaster that was caused by foam insulation that tore from the tank at launching and punched a hole in a heat shield. Superheated gases entered the hole as the ship re-entered the atmosphere from a science mission on Feb. 1, 2003, destroying the Columbia and killing its crew of seven.

After the accident, NASA spent two years and hundreds of millions of dollars redesigning the tank and modifying methods of applying foam insulation to stop shedding. But when the Discovery flew last July, on the first mission since the Columbia, a greatly reduced but hazardous amount of foam fell from its redesigned tank after launching.

NASA then grounded the fleet, and tank engineers removed more than 37 pounds of foam that had formed two air ramps, or deflectors, that protected pressurized fuel lines and a tray guiding cables down the side of the tank. Those were the areas from which the biggest pieces of foam fell during the last mission.

Mr. Hale said Wednesday that there were other tank parts from which engineers would like to remove foam but that officials had decided it was best to fly with only one major modification at a time, to see if the changes worked as expected.

    Still Some Risk, but Shuttle Flight Is Set for July, NYT, 1.6.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/01/science/space/01shuttle.html