Price gouging or simple laws of supply and demand? The Soyuz will soon be the only ride in town to the International Space Station, and reportedly, Russia is considering raising the price per seat. NASA and Roskosmos have an agreement for six rides to the ISS in 2012 and 2013, at a rate of about $51 million dollars per US astronaut. “We have an agreement until 2012 that Russia will be responsible for this,” Roskomos head Anatoly Perminov was quoted by the Interfax news agency. “But after that? Excuse me, but the prices should be absolutely different then!”
The end of the shuttle program means NASA has to buy rides on the Soyuz. The total deal of $306 million (224 million euros) seems to be a pretty good deal for Roskomos. But they say in order to provide seats for the NASA astronauts, they’ll have to quit their space tourism program, which charges only $35 million (28 million euros) per seat.
The $51 million includes training, equipment, medical checks, supplies, services for launch operations and support personnel to launch site, flight control operations, and rendezvous and docking services.
NASA says these services are “serving as a bridge between the Space Shuttle and the availability of a commercial vehicle. Until a commercial vehicle is available, continued access to Russian Crew launch, return, and rescue services is essential for planned ISS operations and utilization by all ISS partners.”
Shuttle Endeavour on the launchpad shortly after the RSS had been retracted. Image: Nancy Atkinson
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The launch of space shuttle Endeavour was scrubbed about 9 minutes before the scheduled 4:39 am EST (9:49 GMT) liftoff due to low clouds that moved into the area. Mission managers have scheduled space shuttle Endeavour’s next launch attempt for Monday, Feb. 8 at 4:14 a.m. EST (9:14 GMT)
The Mission Management Team will meet at 6:15 p.m. Sunday to give the “go” to fill Endeavour’s external fuel tank with propellants. Tank loading will begin at 6:45 p.m.
The launch of the Solar Dynamic Observatory has subsequently been moved one day forward, and is now scheduled for Feb. 10 at 10:26 am EST.
“We tried really, really hard to work the weather,” said Launch Director Mike Leinbach to the crew when the decision had been made to scrub the launch. “It was just too dynamic. We got to feeling good there at one point and then it filled back in and we just were not comfortable launching a space shuttle tonight. So, we’re going to go into a 24-hour scrub. Thank you all for the efforts you all put in tonight. We’ll see you back again tomorrow night and we hope the weather’s a little bit better.” Space Shuttle Endeavour on the pad in the early morning hours of Feb. 7, 2010. Image: Nancy Atkinson
“And Mike from Endeavour, we understand and we’ll give it another try tomorrow night,” STS-130 Commander George Zamka replied.
Nancy Atkinson and Ken Kremer will provide full coverage of both launches and missions –no matter how many attempts it takes! So stay with Universe Today!
Astronauts for the STS-130 mission: Commander George Zamka and Pilot Terry Virts. From the left Mission Specialists Nicholas Patrick, Robert Behnken, Kathryn Hire and Stephen Robinson. Photo credit: NASA/JSC
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Note: Nancy Atkinson is at Kennedy Space Center covering the launch of STS-130
The official countdown clock is ticking for the STS-130 mission of space shuttle Endeavour to the International Space Station. This is the last planned night launch for the shuttle program, with a scheduled liftoff time of 9:39:47 GMT (4:39:47 a.m. EST) on Sunday, February 7. “Everything thus far is going exceeding well… we’re right on schedule where we’re supposed to be and we’ll continue to work through the day on our preparations,” said NASA Test Director Jeff Spaulding during this morning’s L-3 Countdown Status Briefing at KSC. The weather forecast might be the only issue, as forecasters are predicting a 70% chance of favorable weather, with high winds being the only concern for Sunday morning.
The seven-member crew will bring the Tranquility Node and a “cupola,” an observation deck for a full 360 degree view of Earth and the station. It will also serve as a robotic work station. With these new additions, the ISS will be 98% complete.
Tranquility, also known as Node 3 was built in Italy under direction of ESA, in coordination with NASA. “It is one of the most complex modules we’ve brought to the station,” said NASA Payload Manager Joe Delai. “Node 3 is over 3,600 kg (8,000 lbs) heavier than any other module,(with a total weight of 15,115 kg (33,325 lbs.)
At Thursday's press conference, Jeff Spaulding, Joe Delai, and Shuttle Weather Officer Kathy Winters. Image: Nancy Atkinson
Delai said adding the modules will make the ISS larger than a five bedroom house. With all the storage space in Tranquility, the ISS will in total be able to house 100 telephone booth-sized racks and store the supportive equip to allow for a 6-person crew on the ISS.
Delai said they are taking advantage of the 7 X 4 meter (24 X 14 ft) volume of the Node and bringing 33 bags of stowage containing 485 kg (1,068 lbs) of provisions for the crew.
Space shuttle Endeavour as seen from the press viewing area at KSC. Image: Nancy Atkinson
Preparations and tests at Launch Pad 39A will continue with final flight crew stowage occurring after communications checks Saturday. The rotating service structure that protects the shuttle from weather prior to launch will be moved away from the vehicle at about 8 a.m. EST Saturday, and we hope to bring you pictures and an update at that time.
Those were the last words heard from the Challenger shuttle crew on January 28, 1986. Then came an explosion, and the famous “Y” plume of smoke from the solid rocket boosters flying away aimlessly to nowhere.
Mission Control: “Flight Controllers looking carefully at the situation. Obviously a major malfunction.”
Today we remember the Challenger crew, pictured above: (front row) Michael J. Smith, Dick Scobee, Ronald McNair; (back row) Ellison Onizuka, Christa McAuliffe, Gregory Jarvis, Judith Resnik.
Looking for a way to remember the crew, or want more insight on the mission or accident? Read a UT article from Sept. 2008 of how Christa McAuliffe’s lost lesson plans have been given new life by a caring NASA engineer. Read a poem written by Stuart Atkinson about the Challenger accident. On Twitter, people are writing short remembrances of where they were when they heard the news. Below are more ways to remember the crew, and if you’d like, add a comment on your thoughts about the accident/or your recollections from that day.
Space correspondent Miles O’Brien writes in his True Slant blog about the Challenger disaster.
Endeavour on the launchpad for STS-130. Credit: NASA
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Liftoff of space shuttle Endeavour for the STS-130 mission to the International Space Station has been been given the go-ahead, and launch is scheduled for Feb. 7 at 4:39 a.m. EST. Universe Today will be at the launch to provide on-site coverage of all the pre- and post-launch events, and we look forward to sharing the experience with you. This is likely the last night launch of the space shuttle, and it should be a beautiful sight.
STS-130 will bring the Tranquility node and a cupola, a 7-window observation portal for the ISS. Mission managers said at a press briefing today that the issue with problematic ammonia coolant hoses on the module has been resolved. The 7-member crew will carry out three spacewalks to install and outfit the Tranquility node.
Astronauts say it is the most-asked question they get from people. There have been books written about it. Maybe because we all have to do it, everyone wants to know how it works in zero-gravity. This past weekend I gave a presentation to about 60 Girl Scouts about living and working in space, and I knew this question was going to come up. It did, and with this video, I was prepared. Here, Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield eloquently gives the best description ever of how it works to go to the bathroom in space. And he tells all in less than two minutes, too.
The hydrogen gas cannon proposed by Dr. John Hunter
To get something into space right now, you need a rocket. You also need a lot of money, as the current going rate for getting something into orbit is about $5,000 a pound ($11,000 per kg). But what if you could, instead, do away with the rocket and still get your payload to space, for under $1,000 a pound? Sounds like a deal, right.
According to Dr. John Hunter, a physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and president of the company Quicklaunch, Inc., using a hydrogen-powered cannon may be the ticket for cheap access to space. That’s right, a “space gun” platform for inserting satellites, fuel, and other supplies into space genuinely could be the next big thing in space technology.
You might say, “A gun to shoot stuff into space? That sounds like something out of Jules Verne!” And you’d be right: in Verne’s “From the Earth to the Moon” a giant cannon called the Columbiad was used to propel three of the characters in the story to the Moon.
“Jules Verne got it right, he just had to pick the correct fluid, ” Hunter said in a Google Techtalk, embedded below.
Rockets have been the workhorse of space-faring nations for decades, but there are a few newcomers to the game that are just getting started. Space elevators are starting to get “off the ground”, so to speak – the Space Elevator Games turned out a winner just last year – as an alternative method of transporting materials into space.
“We do hear about space elevators a lot of the time, and people always ask, ‘Are you related to space elevators?’, but we don’t interact as far as technologies go.” Hunter said.
Light-gas cannons work almost like you’d expect a really, really big gun to work: at one end inside of a long tube a gas, hydrogen, helium or methane, is pressurized to an extreme pressure, 15,000 PSI in the largest cannon proposed by Hunter. The payload is at this end of the cannon, when the pressure is released, the bullet-shaped projectile that holds the payload is ejected out of the end. Hydrogen is used because of its lightness. Since a projectile can’t go faster than what’s pushing it along inside a cannon, the lighter gas – which can travel quicker – allows for a projectile to be accelerated to incredible speeds, in excess of 13,000 miles per hour (21,000 km/hr).
These cannons have been around since the 1960s, though they haven’t seen any use in space payload delivery technology. The record setting cannon for altitude of a projectile was the High-Altitude Research Project (HARP) cannon. It was built by the United States Department of Defense and Canada’s Department of National Defence, and placed in the Yuma proving grounds in Arizona. It successfully lobbed a Martlet-2C inert projectile to 180 km (112 miles) on November 12th, 1966, which still stands as the altitude record for this type of gun.
Another iteration, developed by Dr. Hunter himself, was the Super High-Altitude Research Project (SHARP, an homage to the original cannon) in the late 1980s by Lawrence Livermore University.
Hunter explained to Universe Today via phone interview, “So here’s what happens: I started back in 1985 at Livermore and I was fresh out of grad school and they hired me to build electric guns which I could have done pretty straightforwardly. But I ran into a guy at a cocktail party, believe it or not. He knew I was working on post-production coil guns and and he said, ‘John, those are great because you can get 12km/s where we can only get to like 9 km/s with these gas guns.’ I said, ‘What’s a gas gun?’ That’s what started this whole ball rolling. As it turns out, the electric guns only get to 5.5 km/s and gas guns get to 11km/s.”
SHARP was – and still is – owned by the United States Air Force. Hunter’s company has a five-year contract to utilize the gun for testing shots, but it’s not set up to do shots vertically. SHARP was originally designed as a testbed for hypersonic engines for scramjets – jets that are accelerated to high speeds, then use a specialized engine of their own to push up to 8 or 9 times the speed of sound.
“If we’re going to to a publicized shot, where there’s a lot of publicity and stuff, we’d have to go to a different system, which would not be a big deal to build one because I could dedicate it for that particular application. If we decide to do the shot with the Air Force, that’ll probably be a smaller subset of people who could watch the shot. The Air Force is sorta careful how they do things so we have to get approval. They actually own the gun.”
So Hunter has struck out on his own to develop a commercially viable cannon that can deliver payloads at a fraction of the cost of conventional rockets. He and two other scientists, Dr. Harry Cartland and Dr. Rick Twogood, formed Quicklaunch, Inc.
“We got out of the blocks the 30th of September when we had the Space Investment Summit. Then I made the talk at Google and then the Popular Science article and we have now briefed a venture capital group. We’re in the “hustle phase” and I expect us to be in this hustle phase for six months, where we have to go just shop our project around. But while we’re in this phase we still believe in hardware so I’m actually going to have a demonstrating submerged version late February. It basically will acquire the right inclination and do shots. It’s going to be a 10-foot prototype,” Hunter said.
Ultimately, Hunter envisions a large-scale cannon that will launch from the sea near the equator. In launching from the sea, the gun will be able to pivot and swing around to launch payloads to different orbits easily. Being near the equator is necessary because that’s where the Earth is spinning its fastest, so objects launched from equatorial latitude can obtain a higher orbit with less energy.
Critical to getting the payloads into orbit is the use of a single-stage rocket attached to the payload projectile. Since the largest gun is projected to get the package going at a little over 7km/s (4.3 miles/s), a booster is needed for that extra push to get it past the escape velocity of the Earth, which is 11.2 km/s (6.95 miles/s).
Don’t expect to see humans launching to the Moon or Mars aboard one of the projectiles, though, as the force of launch from the cannon could be up to 5,000 Gs.
The largest – and most expensive – cannon would be capable of launching 1,000-pound (454 kg) payloads into a Low-Earth Orbit (LEO). The projected cost for this cannon is $500 million, but this is the last stage in a proposed series of cannons that would start out small and build on the lessons learned from each iteration.
After some initial testing with the SHARP gun and prototype models, a system that is capable of launching 2-pound (0.9 kg) payloads into space will be designed. The cost of this cannon, Hunter estimates, will be around $10 million and take two years to get rolling.
“[The 2lb capability launcher] is actually tailored to a small niche, which is the Cubesat community. It makes sense because we can “G-harden” cubesats. To me, that would make a nice niche to be able to work with academics. That’ll be a lot of fun because they’ll be orbiting Cubesats, obviously. In Phase one we’re just going to feed inert rounds, and we’re just going to do maybe 20 shots into low space and break the world record ten or twelve times. In phase two we’ll be orbiting things that will take data and will transmit,” Hunter said.
Cubesats – small satellites that are no larger than a liter volume (10cm cube) and weigh less than a kilogram – can be easily “G-hardened”, or made to withstand the impressive forces of being launched out of a huge cannon.
After this system has been tested, Hunter said, “The first commercial system is going to be a $50 million system for 100-pound [45 kg] capability. $50 million is less than the price of an F-15, basically. I think that’s quite within a lot of folks’ means, particularly if you’ve demonstrated phases one and two before that.”
Don’t get Hunter wrong: $50 million is not within the means of the average Joe, but for launching small satellites into space that’s a pretty small number. Each space shuttle mission, for example, costs $450 million, and to launch a communications satellite you’re talking $50 million to $400 million.
The largest gun – 1.1km in length – would run about $500 million and would be able to be constructed within seven years, optimally. Given that the gun itself is reusable, and that capturing the hydrogen from each firing of the gun could be done to save on fuel costs, the cost for somebody wishing to launch a payload would range between $250-$1000 per pound.
Hunter has already seen interest from various enterprises, he said.
“There has been one private company that will remain confidential. We’re going to keep them private until the smoke clears here. We’ve had serious interest from some people. We intend to increase that number of candidates substantially. We’re going to have more candidates than the last republican convention, that’s my goal!”
With regards to whether or not this type of system has had any interest from the R&D over at NASA, Hunter replied, “We have not approached NASA, and I think NASA is ultimately going to become a client of ours…I’m going to be approaching NASA in the next couple of weeks.”
For more about the specific details of the gun and payload deliver system, watch the Google Techtalk embedded above, or listen to the January 15th episode of The Space Show, on which Hunter appeared as a guest.
An artist's rendering of the Tiangong-1 module, China's space station, which was launched to space in September, 2011. To the right is a Shenzhou spacecraft, preparing to dock with the module. Image Credit: CNSA
China is planning to launch their own space station, named Tiangong, by the end of 2010 or beginning of 2011. There have been a few instances where information about the station surfaces briefly over the past few years about the development of the space station. Specific details on the program are not being release in large doses by the Chinese National Space Administration (CNSA), so the development of the station is somewhat shrouded in mystery.
Qi Faren, one of the designers of the Shenzhou-5 spacecraft, said in an interview on CCTV last month of the upcoming launch, “Quality is the key to technology. We must guarantee a successful launch. We will launch it whenever we are ready. It will be the end of 2010, or the beginning of 2011.”
Here’s what is known about the program: the Tiangong – which means “Heavenly Palace” – station will start out much as the ISS and Mir did, with a small module to house taikonauts. This component, named Tiangong-1, and shown above, is estimated to be an 8.5-ton module that will have life-support and solar energy production facilities. It’s a rather small module, with not much more room than the Shenzou spacecraft that will later carry taikonauts to the station.
The CNSA unveiled a model of the station during TV special celebrating the New Year in January 2009, but not much more has been said until the most recent statements regarding its potential launch dates.
Shenzhou-7 was the last manned Chinese spacecraft to launch, and it brought astronaut and former fighter pilot Zhai Zhigang into space for China’s first spacewalk. The next launch of a Shenzhou spacecraft, Shenzou-8, will be unmanned and is planned to dock with Tiangong-1, reminiscent of the ESA’s Automatic Transfer Vehicle. Of course, details about the date of this launch will be forthcoming pending the launch of the station itself. This docking mission could last a few weeks to a few months, and will carry a payload of scientific experiments.
After that, Shenzhou-9 and -10 will likely carry taikonauts up to the station. It isn’t really clear whether Shenzhou-9 will be another unmanned docking mission, or will carry the first of the taikonauts to board the station. The success of Shenzhou-8 will have a lot to do with whether the following launch will be manned or not. Any of the missions to the station containing humans would be shorter than the unmanned docking missions for the logistical problems raised by bringing humans into space.
According to the Chinese Academy of Sciences, scientific and support modules will eventually be added to the station, named Tiangong II and Tiangong III.
Further down the road, China plans to build a larger, more long-term space facility. Zhang Jianqi, Deputy Commander-in-Chief of China’s Manned Space Engineering Program, told the Xinhua News Agency last March, “…We will go all out to build a long-term manned space station by 2020.” This fits in well with China’s plans to take humans to the Moon after 2020, as it could provide a support platform for such a venture.
As the launch of the newest addition to human outposts in space approaches, we’ll hopefully get more information as to the details of Tiangong.
Alan Stern Twittering during his NASTAR training. Credi: On Orbit.com
Researchers hoping to conduct scientific experiments on commercial suborbital spacecraft completed the first-ever round of training last week at the National Aerospace Training and Research (NASTAR) Center in Pennsylvania. The researchers hope to take advantage of the prospect of quick, low-cost and frequent access to the microgravity environment of suborbital space. They successfully went through full-flight simulation spins in a centrifuge and altitude chamber to simulate the physiological conditions that scientist-astronauts will experience during future missions to 100 km or more altitude. Additionally, they received training on how to best accomplish their science goals in the short 4-6 minute window of zero-g in an actual suborbital flight.
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“Man, that NASTAR centrifuge was a kick!” said Dr. Alan Stern via Twitter following his turn in the multi-axis centrifuge. Stern is the chairman of SARG and a principal organizer of the scientist training program. “At 6 G’s you really feel like you’re hauling the mail. I can’t wait to fly a couple of flights to 130 km!”
The group consisted of 11 scientists, including graduate students, professors and researchers. “It was a great group; a really diverse group of researchers from planetary sciences, life sciences and space sciences,” said Erika Wagner, member of SARG – the Suborbital Applications Researcher Group.
Wagner said the training confirmed the growing interest in conducting research and education missions aboard commercial suborbital spacecraft.
“It was wonderful to see such a great show of interest from the science community,” Wagner told Universe Today. “When we first started this about a year ago, we heard some comments that there would be no interest in this. But the second class is already full and the third class is starting to fill up.”
Stern said the scientists invested their own time and money for the training, adding, “This is a true testament to the growing excitement behind the science potential of new commercial spacecraft.”
The training simulated rides aboard Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo, and the first day of the two-day regimen focused on altitude physiology and the challenges of decompression and spatial disorientation. The second day covered acceleration physiology and how to deal with increased G-forces.
“I think the training itself really made it real for us,” Wagner said. “We’ve been talking about suborbital science for over a year, and up until now it has been a sort of abstract thing. To suddenly be able to work out the details of how an experiment will actually work during a suborbital flight is very important.” Erika Wagner, Alan Stern, and Dan Durda. Credit: OnOrbit.com
Wagner said some of the attendees had previously participated in parabolic airplane flights, like the “Vomit Comet” where researchers have 15-25 seconds of time in microgravity to do the experiments. “They were able to see the similarities and differences much more clearly,” she said. “The great thing about suborbital is you get this nice extended time of zero g, 4-6 minutes depending on the provider. But the challenge is that you only get one shot per flight, whereas in a parabolic flight, although the time is shorter, you get several attempts.”
Wagner said perhaps the best training was how to use your time most efficiently.
“You’ve got to be ready to deal with the acceleration challenges of launch and not be surprised by them, and be prepared for the challenges of getting out of your seat, unstowing your equipment and conducting an experiment in what may be a somewhat chaotic environment,” she said. “If you’ve never thought about those details before you fly, you’re not going to get very good quality science. But I think NASTAR has done a good job of making it clear to the investigators that you really want to maximize your science.”
Therefore, the most important part of the training was the least ‘flashy,’ Wagner said. “We did an exercise ‘Distraction Factors,’ which simulated the amount of space you’ll have to do your experiment, giving you five minutes to get out of your chair, gather your materials, conduct your experiment, put everything away and get back in your seat while everyone else is doing very different things around you, and then prepare for reentry. It wasn’t flashy but it highlighted the challenges of doing quality science. And also it challenges investigators to develop more efficient experiments.” Keith Cowing from OnOrbit.com, standing in front of the 25 foot centrifuge
Wagner said the most humorous, albeit sobering part of this training is that when they completed the exercise, the instructor asked them if they had seen what was on the wall. “We all said, ‘What? What wall?’ It turns out they had been showing beautiful images of the Earth and space on a huge wall to simulate what we would see from space, and none of us had any clue they had done that because we were so focused on getting the task done. That highlighted for us the amount of attention and practice it is going to take for us to do an experiment in a four minute period. Plus you’ll want to take time to enjoy the experience.”
“We want to inform researchers on this opportunity,” Wagner said,”and find out how they want to use the vehicles and any constraints they might have, and feed that back to the vehicle designers and flight providers.”
Caption: Tranquility and Cupola lowered into canister for transport to Launch Pad 39 A. Credit: NASA
NASA managers decided on Tuesday (Jan. 12) to press forward towards an on time liftoff target date of Feb 7 for Space Shuttle Endeavour as engineers developed a workaround solution to the ammonia coolant hose leak issue which has threatened to delay the launch or seriously alter the mission goals (read my earlier post). The ammonia jumper hoses are critical to the success of the STS 130 mission because they will supply cooling capacity to the new Tranquility module by circulating ammonia and transport the heat generated by the on board systems. Space walking astronauts must connect the hoses from Tranquility to the space station’s cooling system during the STS 130 flight in order to fully activate Tranquility for use by the orbiting outposts crew.
The primary goal of STS 130 is to deliver, attach and activate the Italian built Tranquility pressurized module with will provide significant additional living and work space for the resident ISS crews. Joined to one end of Tranquility is the Cupola observation module. Three EVA’s are planned to accomplish all the essential work to wholly attach and activate Tranquility and also relocate Cupola to an earth facing port on Tranquility.
Mike Suffredini, NASA’s space station manager, decided to proceed toward a Feb 7 launch and that the mission will retain full mission content. Thus there will be no reduction in tasks and NASA is no longer pursuing a “partial” activation of Tranquility. The crew is therefore expected to accomplish 100% of their goals in activating Tranquility and Cupola.
One of the four 14 ft long flight hoses due to be installed by the astronauts failed during the final pre-flight testing on Jan 7 at a subcontractors facility in California. The high pressure hose ruptured during pressure testing at just about half the specified design pressure, at around 1500 psi vs. the specification of approximately 3000 psi.
After a thorough analysis and evaluation, NASA engineering teams decided to select an alternative hose design which involves welding together shorter 7 ft hoses that are already certified and tested for use aboard the station as the primary jumper, according to Pete Hasbrook, NASA’s Expedition 22 lead increment manager. “They have been working on a beefed up version of the hoses, adding a second braid around the hoses, beefing up the weld and the connector that the metal braid is connected to,” Hasbrook explained at a media briefing on Monday (Jan 11). “The new hoses have now been successfully tested to over 3000 psi”.
The new hoses are now under construction and are set to be delivered to the Kennedy Space Center just about one week before the Feb. 7 target launch date. Any further problems could delay the mission as the number of contingency days available for flow processing is declining. There is no longer any consideration of switching this flight with the next mission, STS 131, planned to blast off on March 18.
Tranquility and Cupola were lifted by crane from their workstand (see photos) inside the Space Station Processing facility (SSPF) today (Jan 12) and gently packed inside the nearby payload transportation canister. The current plan is to move them to the pad this Saturday, according to NASA spokesman Allard Beutel. Continuing cold weather at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida has caused a slight delay in pre-launch activities by technicians working to load propellants aboard Endeavour at Launch Pad 39 A. Read my earlier report on rollout of Endeavour to Pad 39 A here. Caption: Endeavour was rolled out to Pad 39 A on Jan 6, 2010. Credit: Ken Kremer
This entire hose problem stems from NASA’s decision to change the attach location of Tranquility to the port side (left) of the Unity node, designated as Node 1 and located at the center of the station. To accommodate this change in location custom built hoses were required. “The hoses needed to be longer than originally designed”, Beutel explained to me. “Hoses from the group that were set to fly on STS-130 failed so that’s why we’re looking at all the hoses and making modifications to our plans”.
NASA has also decided on a back up “Plan B”, which is to accelerate development of a redesigned set of “functionally equivalent hoses”, at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, based on the design that failed and bring them up along to orbit for use in the event a problem arises with the new primary design.
Meanwhile, the six person crew of Endeavour continues to train at the Johnson Space Center. They still plan to fly to the Cape for several days of countdown dress rehearsal and safety training on Jan 19.
