The space shuttle Discovery moved to the Kennedy Space Center Launch Pad on Jan. 14, but launch has been postponed until further notice. Credit: NASA/Troy Cryder
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NASA announced yet another delay for the launch of the Discovery STS-119 mission to the International Space Station Friday, marking the fourth time the mission has been postponed.
An all-day review of the craft’s readiness for launch left managers still under-confident about the operations of three hydrogen control valves that channel gaseous hydrogen from the main engines to the external fuel tank. Engineering teams have been working to identify what caused damage to a flow control valve on shuttle Endeavour during its November 2008 flight. NASA managers decided Friday more data and possible testing are required before launch can proceed.
“We need to complete more work to have a better understanding before flying,” said Bill Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for Space Operations at NASA Headquarters in Washington. Gerstenmaier chaired Friday’s Flight Readiness Review.
“We were not driven by schedule pressure and did the right thing. When we fly, we want to do so with full confidence.”
The STS-119 crew members gather in front of the hatch into space shuttle Discovery to place the mission plaque. Standing from left are Mission Specialists Joseph Acaba, Koichi Wakata, Steve Swanson, John Phillips and Richard Arnold and Pilot Tony Antonelli. Kneeling in front is Commander Lee Archambault. Photo credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett January 20, 2009
Besides understanding what happened with Endeavor’s valves last fall, teams also have tried to determine the consequences if a valve piece were to break off and strike part of the shuttle and external fuel tank.
Meanwhile, the Discovery launch date has shifted from Feb. 12, to Feb. 19, to Feb. 22, Feb. 27 and now — as of last night’s briefing — is postponed until further notice. The Space Shuttle Program has been asked to develop a plan for further inspections. The plan will be reviewed during a meeting on Wednesday, Feb. 25 and a new target launch date may be considered then.
The STS-119 mission is supposed to enhance the solar gathering power of the International Space Station so it might support a larger crew. When it does fly, STS-119 will tote two solar array wings, each of which has two 115-foot-long arrays, for a total wing span of 240 feet, including the equipment that connects the two halves and allows them to twist as they track the sun. Altogether, the four sets of arrays can generate 84 to 120 kilowatts of electricity – enough to provide power for more than 40 average homes.
The mission astronauts arrived at the Kennedy Space Center Jan. 19 and have more or less been in standby mode ever since, shuttling back and forth between Florida and the Johnson Space Center in Houston. On Wednesday of this week, STS-119 mission specialists Richard Arnold and Joseph Acaba were in the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory at Johnson, brushing up on spacewalk procedures. As of Thursday, the astronauts were in launch-countdown mode which included preflight quarantine.
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The Hubble Space Telescope repair mission, STS-125 seemingly gets bad news after more bad news. The mission was already delayed due Hurricane Ike in 2008, and again when a data handling processor on the spacecraft failed. Now, the mission may be too risky for both spacecraft and astronauts following the collision of the Iridium satellite and a defunct Russian communications spacecraft last week. There may be too much debris floating around close to Hubble’s orbit, breaching the safety limits NASA has in place. Without a servicing mission by a space shuttle crew, currently targeted for launch in May, the telescope is not expected to last more than another year or two.
Astronauts on spacewalks are even more at risk than the shuttle or even Hubble, and there are five spacewalks planned during the Hubble servicing flight to replace the telescope’s batteries, install new science instruments (including a new camera) and re-apply radiation shielding.
Hubble orbits higher than the International Space Station, closer to the cloud of debris from the collision. Even before the collision, the probabilities of a debris strike for the Hubble mission were already close to NASA’s safety limit. NASA pegged the chance of a catastrophic impact to a shuttle in Hubble’s orbit at 1 in 185, just below its limit of 1 in 200.
Other debris in that orbit includes pieces of a satellite that China blew up in 2007 as part of a missile test, adding hundreds of pieces of potentially hazardous debris.
Mark Matney, an orbital-debris specialist at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, told Nature magazine that even before last week’s crash the risk of a debris impact for the shuttle already “uncomfortably close to unacceptable levels. This is only going to add on to that.”
A decision about whether to proceed with the Hubble repair mission could be made in the next week or two, Nature reports.
The Delta II rocket lofts the NOAA-N Prime spacecraft into the night sky over Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Photo credit: NASA/Carleton Bailie, ULA
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Just a few notes on a couple of NASA launches; one was a go, and the other is a no-go for now. The NOAA-N Prime spacecraft got off the ground early Friday morning, lifting off at 2:22 a.m. PST, after working through technical problems that delayed the launch twice. The spacecraft successfully reached its polar orbit, and was renamed NOAA-19. The new satellite will collect data about the Earth’s surface and atmosphere to aid in weather forecasts, climate observations and search and rescue operations. Watch the launch video. On the other side of the coin, the launch of space shuttle Discovery on a space station assembly mission, which was delayed earlier this week from Feb. 12 to Feb. 19 because of concerns about hydrogen flow control valves, has now been slipped to no earlier than Feb. 22 to give engineers more time to complete testing, NASA officials said today.
Each shuttle has three of these valves, one for each main engine. They operate like lawn sprinklers, popping up as required to route hydrogen gas into pipes leading to the external tank to maintain the internal pressure needed to feed propellant to the main engines.
During the launch of Endeavour last November, one of the three flow control valves allowed more hydrogen to pass through than expected, while the other two worked fine. There was no problem with Endeavour’s ascent, but mission managers want to understand the issues better before sending Discovery to the space station to bring up the final solar array on STS-119. Attired in training versions of their shuttle launch and entry suits, the STS-119 crew members await the start of a training session in the Space Vehicle Mockup Facility at Johnson Space Center, Houston. Image: NASA
For more information on Discovery, check out NASA’s STS-119 web page, and here’s where you’ll find more info on NOAA-19.
Two shuttles on the pads in September 2008.Credit: NASA
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The space shuttles are slated to be retired in September of 2010. NASA put out a call recently to ask what should be done with the shuttles post-retirement, and many think they should be put in museums or on display in rocket parks. But futurist and entrepreneur Eric Knight, (founder of UP Aerospace and Remarkable Technologies) has a somewhat novel idea of what to do with the shuttles after they are done with their current duties: Send them to Mars. He says his formula is simple and will allow humans to travel to Mars in years, not decades.
Knight’s proposal, which he calls “Mars on a Shoestring,” outlines two shuttles going into Earth orbit, hooking them together with a truss and strapping on a powerful enough propulsion system. And that’s pretty much it. A pressurized inflatable conduit would connect the two orbiters so the astronauts could go back and forth between the two shuttles.
Then comes the really cool part; a way to provide artificial gravity during the trip to Mars. From Knight’s webpage:
• Once the propulsion stage has accelerated this entire system on its trek to Mars, the truss is detached from the two orbiters and the truss-propulsion assembly is jettisoned.
• The two orbiters then separate to a distance of a few hundred feet, but remain connected — top to top — by a tether cable that is spooled out.
• During the separation, the accordion-style inflatable crew-transfer conduit equally elongates.
• Once the orbiters are at their maximum fixed distance apart, they would simultaneously fire their reaction control systems to set the pair into an elegant pirouette — creating a comfortable level of artificial gravity for the crew’s voyage to the red planet.
However, in an interview we did with JPL’s Rob Manning for a previous article on Universe Today (see “The Mars Landing Approach: Getting Large Payloads to the Surface of the Red Planet), Manning says there’s currently no way and there’s not a parachute big enough to allow a big spacecraft, even a high lift vehicle like a shuttle to land successfully on Mars. The atmosphere is too thin to provide any drag.
From our earlier article:
“Well, on Mars, when you use a very high lift to weight to drag ratio like the shuttle,” said Manning, “in order to get good deceleration and use the lift properly, you’d need to cut low into the atmosphere. You’d still be going at Mach 2 or 3 fairly close to the ground. If you had a good control system you could spread out your deceleration to lengthen the time you are in the air. You’d eventually slow down to under Mach 2 to open a parachute, but you’d be too close to the ground and even an ultra large supersonic parachute would not save you.”
Supersonic parachute experts have concluded that to sufficiently slow a large shuttle-type vehicle on Mars and reach the ground at reasonable speeds would require a parachute one hundred meters in diameter.
“That’s a good fraction of the Rose Bowl. That’s huge,” said Manning. “We believe there’s no way to make a 100-meter parachute that can be opened safely supersonically, not to mention the time it takes to inflate something that large. You’d be on the ground before it was fully inflated. It would not be a good outcome.”
So, while Knight’s proposal is interesting and perhaps forward-thinking, it would need quite a bit of work to actually be feasible. He admits as much, saying “This thought paper is certainly not meant to be the technical be all, end all on the topic — but merely a springboard to new thought. The science and topics touched on herein are superficial; the concepts are simply provided to fuel the imagination and promote discussion.”
“In all, I hope that my thought paper provides a catalyst for additional thinking as we ponder our place in the universe — and the methods to transport us to new frontiers.”
Who knows? Many successful endeavors start out as crazy ideas. But first, someone has to have the idea.
[/caption]Early last year, concern was growing for a Wolf-Rayet star named WR 104 that appeared to be aiming right at Earth (see Looking Down the Barrel of A Gamma Ray Burst). A Wolf-Rayet star is a highly unstable star coming to the end of its life, possibly culminating in a powerful, planet-killing gamma-ray burst (GRB). GRBs are collimated beams of high energy gamma-rays, projected from the poles of a collapsing Wolf-Rayet star. It was little wonder that we were concerned when a dying Wolf-Rayet star was found to be pointing right at us! Today, at the AAS in Long Beach, one scientist working at the Keck Telescope has taken a keen interest in WR 104 and shared new findings that show our Solar System may not be bathed in deadly gamma-rays after all…
Wolf-Rayet stars are evolved massive stars undergoing a suicidal and violent death. They are very hot (up to 50,000K) and losing mass very quickly, generating powerful stellar winds (at velocities of 2000 km/s). WR 104 was imaged using the Keck Telescope in Hawaii last March, and images of the pinwheel spiral star system appeared to show that we were “looking down a rifle barrel”.
So what is causing this spiral structure around WR 104? The star has a binary O-type star partner, so as WD 104 sheds its mass, the stellar winds spiral outward. As we are seeing the full spiral from Earth, it was therefore reasonable to assume the binary system was facing right toward us. As WR 104 probably has its pole pointing 90° from the ecliptic plane, any future GRB could be directed straight at us.
“WR 104 is a fascinating object that got a lot of press last spring,” Dr Grant Hill said during the AAS meeting today (Jan 7th). “Since the object is in our galaxy, it could be devastating [for Earth]”
Hill therefore decided to confirm previous Keck observations with spectroscopic data to find out if there could be the possibility of an Earth-directed GRB. His work confirms the system is a binary pair, orbiting each other at an 8 month period. Hill also confirmed the presence of a shock front between the stellar winds of WD 104 and O-type partner. And there is some very good news for Earth. It would appear the original Keck imagry may not have been as straight-forward as it seemed. Spectroscopic emission lines from the binary pair strongly suggest the system is in fact inclined 30°-40° (possibly as much as 45°) away from us.
So, Earth doesn’t appear to be in the firing line of WR 104 after all…
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NASA released a detailed and sometimes graphic new report outlining what happened during the break-up of the Columbia space shuttle on Feb. 1, 2003. The purpose of the report is to specify what was learned from the Columbia accident in regards to crew safety and survivability for future spaceflight. The extensive 400 page report contains information that had already been released over the years, but also includes a new minute-by-minute timeline describing what happened to the vehicle as it re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere, and revealing the commander and pilot attempted to troubleshoot a cascade of problems in the final moments before the shuttle went out of control. As the report states, “This report is the first comprehensive, publicly available accident investigation report addressing crew survival for a human spacecraft mishap, and it provides key information for future crew survival investigations. The results of this investigation are intended to add meaning to the sacrifice of the crew’s lives by making space flight safer for all future generations.”
The report is actually quite interesting to read, and it vividly brings back the events of the Columbia accident which happened almost six years ago.
The key information in the report reveals what actually killed the astronauts and how future vehicles and flight should be approached as far as astronaut suits, helmets and body restraints. The facts are that the astronauts were not properly restrained. The lower body restraints held the astronauts in their seats, but the upper body restraints did not hold the astronauts bodies in place, and as the vehicle lost control and was spinning — which the report calls a dynamic rotating load environment — the astronauts’ upper bodies were thrown around, and were subject to blunt force trauma. The helmets also did not protect their heads properly.
However, the forces acting on the shuttle’s crew module in the final minute or so before it broke apart subjected the astronauts to a sudden loss of air pressure that occurred so rapidly they did not have time to close their helmet visors. One astronaut had not yet put on their helmet, and three were not wearing gloves.
The timeline shows that at about 227,000 feet above Earth, hot gases entered a hole in Columbia’s left, created by foam from the external fuel tank striking the wing during launch. Alarms started going off, such as in the wheel well, and then pieces of debris started coming off the shuttle. When the wing had broken up enough that it was no longer functional and the ship’s computers could no longer compensate for the unequal forces on the vehicle, Columbia went out of control.
At 180,000 feet, the crew compartment was disengaged from the shuttle, and the module broke apart within a few moments due to thermal stress and aerodynamic forces. The crew died from hypoxia and blunt force trauma.
With current technology available, the breakup would not have been survivable.
Ground based images of the break-up of Columbia.
But had the crew been able to survive, and were merely unconscious, they were wearing parachutes. However, the problem with these parachutes is that they require manual activation. The report recommends new parachutes which would be deployed automatically in the event an astronaut was thrown from the vehicle. Additionally, the current ACES (Advanced Crew Espace Suit) suits worn by the astronauts are certified to operate at a maximum altitude of 100,000 feet, and certified to survive exposure to a maximum velocity of 560 knots equivalent air speed. The operating envelope of the orbiter is much greater than this. The recommendation to strengthen the weak areas of the suit system will increase the probability of survival.
Those are just a couple of examples of recommendations in the report of what could be done in the future when a vehicle is not savable, but how the lives of the astronauts could possibly be saved. NASA has already made some changes to harnesses and restraints, and they want to incorporate those changes in the next vehicle, to make space travel safer and more survivable in the future.
Other recommendations from the report:
“Future spacecraft suits and seat restraints should use state-of-the-art technology in an integrated solution to minimize crew injury and maximize crew survival in off-nominal acceleration environments. Inertial reels should be evaluated for appropriateness of design for off-nominal scenarios.
• Helmets should provide head and neck protection in off-nominal dynamic load conditions. The current space shuttle inertial reels should be manually locked at the first sign of an off-nominal situation.
• Future spacecraft should be evaluated while still in the design phase for dynamics and entry thermal and aerodynamic loads during a vehicle LOC for adequate integration into development, design, and crew training.
• Future crewed spacecraft vehicle design should account for vehicle LOC contingencies to maximize the probability of crew survival.” Recovered flight deck video from Columbia.
The report also includes images taken from a middeck and flight deck video recovered from the accident, as well as from infrared images taken from the ground during the shuttle’s rentry.
The loss of the shuttle occurred rapidly, and there was nothing the crew could have done. A detailed moment by moment timeline shows that at GMT 13:58:48, a partial transmission was received, which the Commander Rick Husband said, “And, uh, Hou…” At that point the vehicle and crew were still performing nominally.
The last audio transmission from Columbia, “Roger, …” was cut off at 13:59:32.
Complete loss of control of the vehicle is listed as no earlier than 13:59:37.
The report lists several courses of action for more study in the future including completing an analysis on the Challenger debris to compare and contrast with the Columbia findings.
A teleconference to discuss the study is scheduled for 4 p.m. EST. This post will be updated with any pertinent information.
Shuttle Endeavour catches a ride from a 747. Image Credit: NASA/Carla Thomas
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Say what you want about the space shuttle program, but one thing is for certain: the shuttle is very photogenic. This very nifty image was taken by a chase plane looking down as a Boeing 747 airplane ferried Space Shuttle Endeavour from California to Florida on Dec. 10, 2008, and is today’s NASA picture of the day. The backdrop is the Mojave Desert in California. This image got me looking for other interesting pictures of the space shuttle, and so I’ve compiled a few here. Interesting Update: Just after posting this, I came across a news release from NASA that they are soliciting ideas for displaying the space shuttles after they are retired!
Space shuttle on approach to ISS. Credit: NASA
Here Space Shuttle Discovery is approaching the International Space Station in February 2003 during the pitch maneuver that allows the station crew to photograph the entire shuttle to look for any possible damage from launch debris. Breathtaking!
Space Shuttle's tail and Earth's limb. Credit: NASA
This unique image is of the space shuttle’s tail with the limb of Earth’s atmosphere in the background. Space Shuttle Challenger in 1983. Credit: NASA.
Space Shuttle Challenger taken with a 70mm camera onboard a satellite that the shuttle brought up to space. It was taken in 1983, and so is from one of the early shuttle flights. NASA has since abandoned having their cameras put crosshairs on their images, which makes them less scienc-y and more just, wow.
Space Shuttle sonic boom.
I found this image in several places around the web, but I don’t know who actually took the image. Anyone have a clue who to credit for this image? Its the space shuttle just as its is going through the sound barrier. Endeavour landing. Credit: NASA
This is a beautiful night landing of Space Shuttle Endeavour, and its one of my favorite shuttle images. If anyone has any more favorite shuttle images, feel free to post the links!
Endeavour successfully took off atop a 747 this morning under blue skies. Farewell Endeavour, it was a joy to have you visit (NASA)
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Update:Space Shuttle Endeavour left Edwards Air Force Base this morning at 7am, after a 10-day stop over in the Mojave Desert, 65 miles northeast of Los Angeles. Have a safe flight to Florida Endeavour, it was great to have you as a guest!
You’ve probably heard this announcement at the airport before: “Flight delayed due to bad weather.” Quickly followed by, “You can’t be serious!” from the red-faced guy behind you, slamming his briefcase to the floor, resulting in an angry hoard of commuters rushing to the ticket desk to blame the airline for the snow storm outside (because the natural phenomenon of snow is their fault).
However, at Edwards Air Force Base in California, another, more patient passenger awaits her flight back to Florida. But rather than the delay being a matter of minutes or hours, Space Shuttle Endeavour’s flight to Florida has been delayed by three days, and counting…
Endeavour had an astounding mission (STS-126) to the International Space Station last month. The shuttle carried a team of seven to perform one of the busiest 16-day orbital stop-overs yet. The crew completed several spacewalks to fix stiff solar alpha rotary joints, upgraded the station modules to accommodate six permanent station crew members and transported some cool educational experiments into space.
"I just heard some sort of explosion!" Nope, it was just that pesky space shuttle... (LA Times)All in all, STS-126 was an outright success. Even the confused spiders in the biology experiment payload performed with excellence, dealing with microgravity and spinning a web just like they did on Earth. Everything appeared to go pretty much without incident (apart from the loss of a $100,000 toolbag), that was until Endeavour was told to land 2000 miles off target due to bad weather over Florida. Rather than returning to home soil, the shuttle landed at Edwards Air Force Base in the Mojave Desert in California (buzzing the locals on November 30th).
So alternative arrangements had to be made to ferry the shuttle back to Kennedy Space Center, and this included a customized NASA Boeing 747 jumbo jet taxi ride (with a fare of $1.8 million). Endeavour will enjoy a piggyback ride atop the aircraft, hopefully taking off first thing in the morning (Wednesday).
NASA is keeping a close eye on the weather front causing the problems; Endeavour was tentatively scheduled to fly home on Sunday, but poor weather between California and Florida pushed the delay further into the week. NASA does not allow the flying duo to pass through cloud or any inclement weather, so they are allowed to be picky about when to fly.
NASA announced Thursday that space shuttle Atlantis’ STS-125 mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope is targeted to launch May 12, 2009. The mission, which was previously scheduled for October of this year was delayed when a data handling unit on the telescope failed. Since then, engineers have been working to prepare a 1970’s era spare unit for flight. They expect to be able to ship the spare, known as the Science Instrument Command and Data Handling System, to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida in spring 2009.
STS-125 is an 11-day flight featuring five spacewalks to extend Hubble’s life into the next decade by refurbishing and upgrading the telescope with state-of-the-art science instruments and swapping failed hardware. The crew consists of Scott Altman, commander; Greg Johnson, pilot; and mission specialists are veteran spacewalkers John Grunsfeld and Mike Massimino, and first-time space fliers Andrew Feustel, Michael Good and Megan McArthur.
The next space shuttle mission, STS-119, is scheduled for launch on Feb. 12, 2009, which will go to the International Space Station and bring up the S6 starboard truss segment and the final set of solar arrays. Another shuttle mission, STS-127 mission, is also targeted for launch in May 2009, but it’s possible that flight could slip. The Hubble mission will need another shuttle on standby for a rescue mission, should STS-125 encounter any problems (since its not going to the ISS, which would serve as a safe haven if a shuttle had any damage where it could not land safely).
Beyond that, STS-128 is targeted for August 2009, and STS-129 is targeted for November 2009. As always, all target launch dates are subject to change.
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Sunday was a busy day for human spaceflight, as space shuttle Endeavour landed safely at Edwards Air Force Base in California, and a Progress re-supply ship docked at the International Space Station. While the shuttle landing went off without a hitch, problems developed with an automated docking system for the Progress ship, forcing a last-minute switch to a manual docking, performed by Russian cosmonaut Yuri Lonchakov. A series of problems including the loss of frequency information and unexpected toggling of the automatic system’s tracking displays occurred, Russian news agencies reported. But Lonchakov, who was already at the manual controls as a precaution, took over from the automated system when the Progress was about 30 meters (98 feet) from the station and guided it flawlessly to the docking port within a few minutes. ISS Commander Mike Fincke and Yuri Lonchakov give thumbs up after a successful manual docking of the Progress vehicle. Credit: NASA TV
The decision to land in California was made early Sunday morning, as thunderstorms and strong winds prevented Endeavour from attempting either of the two landing opportunities at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the primary landing site.
The clear blue skies in southern California made for a picturesque landing, with a great view of the shuttle as it quickly dropped through the sky.
Endeavour touched down at 3:25 p.m Central time.
Endeavour arrived at the station Nov. 16, delivering equipment that will help allow the station to double its crew size to six. The new gear includes a water recovery system, which will allow urine and other condensate to be purified and converted into water for the crew’s use. Endeavour returned with samples of the processed water for experts in Houston to analyze before it is approved for use by the crew.
Endeavour’s astronauts also repaired and serviced crucial rotating joints for the station’s giant solar arrays. During four spacewalks, the astronauts lubricated and cleaned the joints that allow the arrays to automatically track the sun.
In addition, Expedition 18 Flight Engineer Sandy Magnus replaced Greg Chamitoff as part of the ISS crew. Chamitoff returned to Earth aboard Endeavour.
STS-126 is the 124th shuttle mission and 27th shuttle flight to visit the space station. Progress vehicle as it approached the ISS. Credit: NASA TV
The Progress vehicle, which blasted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on November 26, was carrying water, scientific equipment as well as personal items and holiday gifts for the ISS crew.
