Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

13 Things That Saved Apollo 13, Part 12: Lunar Orbit Rendezvous

Very early concept diagrams, circa 1959, of the Saturn I, Saturn V and Nova C8 rockets. Source: Wikipedia

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Note: To celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 13 mission, for 13 days, Universe Today will feature “13 Things That Saved Apollo 13,” discussing different turning points of the mission with NASA engineer Jerry Woodfill.

Going to the Moon was big. It was a giant stride in doing what had once been thought impossible. Initially many scientists and engineers had big plans for huge rockets akin to the ships imagined in science fiction: one piece vehicles that took off from Earth, landed intact bottom down on the Moon and had the ability to launch again from the lunar surface. But other rocket engineers had different ideas, and this caused some big arguments. The method of going to the Moon that eventually won out used — in part — a little lunar lander. This decision ended up being instrumental in saving the crew of Apollo 13. And that was big.

The three different Apollo flight modes. Credit: NASA

There were three different methods to choose from in reaching the Moon. One, called the Direct Ascent Mode, would have used the big Flash Gordon-like enormous rocket – which was known as a Nova class rocket –to fly straight to the Moon, land and return. Second, the Earth Orbital Rendezvous technique called for two not-quite-as big Saturn V boosters to launch and rendezvous in Earth orbit. In this mode, one rocket would carry a single Apollo vehicle and its crew, and the other, more fuel, which would be transferred to Apollo in Earth orbit, and then the spacecraft would head off to the Moon. The third option was Lunar Orbit Rendezvous which used only one three-stage Saturn V booster, and split the Apollo vehicle into two separate vehicles – a combined Command and Service Module (CSM), and a Lunar Module (LM).

Those familiar with NASA history know that Lunar Orbit Rendezvous was the final choice.

But this mode wasn’t an obvious choice, said NASA engineer Jerry Woodfill.

“At first, Werner Von Braun wanted to use the Nova class rocket Direct Ascent approach, and so did President Kennedy’s science advisor, ” Woodfill said. “But a group at Langley Research Center led by Dr. John Houbolt came up with the Lunar Orbit Rendezvous design. And most everyone ignored them at first.”

NASA engineer John C. Houbolt describes the Lunar Orbit Rendezvous concept at the chalkboard in July 1962. Image Credit: NASA

But Houbolt insisted the one-rocket system was not feasible. In a NASA interview Houbolt said, “It can not be done. I said you must include rendezvous in your thinking — to simplify, to manage your energy much better.”

Houbolt said it turned into a two-and-a-half year fight to convince people, but he and his team had the facts and figures to back up their claims.

Woodfill said one of his colleagues, former NASA engineer Bob Lacy was part of the discussions on which plan to use. “He said it was unbelievable,” Woodfill recalled. “They were debating in a meeting room at Langley about the best way to go to the Moon. One side was for sending a single vehicle requiring a huge booster to get it there. The other group wanted a two spaceship method. No one seemed agreeable to the other side’s approach. Tempers were starting to flare. To ease the situation someone said, ‘Let’s flip a coin to settle the score.’ Can you believe that?”

No one flipped a coin, but the story demonstrates the intensity of the debate.

In the race to get to the Moon, the Soviet Union had embraced the Nova rocket concept. “The Soviets pressed forward with the direct assent approach to use a Nova class booster,” said Woodfill. “Designated N-1, it clustered 30 engines on its first stage. The design achieved a Herculean thrust of 10-12 millions pounds. Additionally, this uncomplicated direct ascent launch would be less complex was thought to take less time to accomplish. Designing, building, testing and launching two separate spaceships might not win the race to the Moon.”

Woodfill said the Nova rocket may have proved to be the best choice except for the failure of just one of those 30 engines at launch. “This would unbalance the entire assemblage,” Woodfill said.

And twice in 1969 – one occurring just weeks before the scheduled launch of Apollo 11 — the Soviet N-1 booster exploded at liftoff. The huge rocket proved to be too complicated, while the Lunar Orbit Rendezvous method had a simple elegance that was also more economical.

A diagram of the lunar-orbit rendezvous used on Apollo by John Houbolt. Credit: NASA

In November 1961, Houbolt boldly wrote a letter to NASA associate administrator Robert C. Seamans, “Do we want to go to the Moon or not?” he wrote. “Why is Nova, with its ponderous size simply just accepted, and why is a much less grandiose scheme involving rendezvous ostracized or put on the defensive? I fully realize that contacting you in this manner is somewhat unorthodox,” Houbolt admitted, “but the issues at stake are crucial enough to us all that an unusual course is warranted.”

The bold move paid off, and Seamans saw to it that NASA took a closer look at Houbolt’s design, and surprisingly, it soon became the favored approach – after a little debate..

Houbolt’s design separated the spacecraft into two specialized vehicles. This allowed the spacecraft to take advantage of the Moon’s low gravity. The lunar lander could be made quite small and lightweight, reducing bulk, fuel, and thrust requirements.

The Lunar Module Aquarius, after it was jettisoned from the CSM. Farewell Aquarius, we thank you, the crew radioed. Credit: NASA

When the oxygen tank in Apollo 13’s Service Module exploded, the Lunar Module “Aquarius” played an unexpected role in saving the lives of the three astronauts, serving as a lifeboat to return the astronauts safely back to Earth. Additionally, its descent stage engine was used for propulsion, and its batteries supplied power for the trip home while recharging the Command Module’s batteries critical for re-entry. And with ingenuity of Mission Control the LM’s life support system – which was originally designed to support two astronauts for 45 hours, — was stretched to support three astronauts for 90 hours.

Imagine, Woodfill said, if Apollo 13 had been a single vehicle employing the Direct Ascent approach. “After the explosion and subsequent loss of the fuel cells, only those entry batteries would have been available to sustain life. Their life, even if all systems except life support, were turned off would be less than 24 hours. And Lovell, Swigert and Haise along with Apollo 13 would return to Earth on that “free-return-trajectory” being cremated in the fiery heat of reentry. But for the clever Lunar Orbit Rendezvous approach, Apollo 13 would have been a casket. Instead, its lunar lander became a wonderful lifeboat” Woodfill said.

Next: Part 13: Houston

Earlier articles from the “13 Things That Saved Apollo 13” series:

Introduction

Part 1: Timing

Part 2: The Hatch That Wouldn’t Close

Part 3: Charlie Duke’s Measles

Part 4: Using the LM for Propulsion

Part 5: Unexplained Shutdown of the Saturn V Center Engine

Part 6: Navigating by Earth’s Terminator

Part 7: The Apollo 1 Fire

Part 8: The Command Module Wasn’t Severed

Part 9: Position of the Tanks

Part 10: Duct Tape

Part 11: A Hollywood Movie

Part 12: Lunar Orbit Rendezvous

Part 13: The Mission Operations Team

Also:

Your Questions about Apollo 13 Answered by Jerry Woodfill (Part 1)

More Reader Questions about Apollo 13 Answered by Jerry Woodfill (part 2)

Final Round of Apollo 13 Questions Answered by Jerry Woodfill (part 3)

Never Before Published Images of Apollo 13’s Recovery

Listen to an interview of Jerry Woodfill on the 365 Days of Astronomy podcast.

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Satellite Captures Wall of Dust Moving Across Sahara

Wall of dust in the Sahara Desert. NASA image by Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team at NASA GSFC.

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Wow — this looks HUGE from orbit — can you imagine standing out in the Sahara Desert and seeing this gigantic wall of dust heading right towards you? The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite observed this wall of dust on April 22, 2010 which spans hundreds of kilometers. See the image below for a wider view of the area.


NASA image by Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team at NASA GSFC.

The region affected by this dust storm includes not just the Sahara Desert but also the Sahel, a semi-arid grassland region bordering the massive desert on the south. The dust plume hovers primarily over Burkina Faso and Mali. Straddling the border between Burkina Faso and Niger, an especially thick layer of dust appears to push southeastward.

Source: NASA Earth Observatory

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Possible Destination? Researchers Find Water Ice and Organics on Asteroid

Asteroid Itokawa. Credit: JAXA

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We usually think of asteroids as dark, dry, lifeless chunks of rock, just like the image of Asteroid Itokawa, above. But some asteroids may be more like “minor planets” after all. Researchers have found evidence on one asteroid – 24 Themis – of water ice and organic materials. This discovery is exciting on two fronts: one, this evidence supports the idea that asteroids could be responsible for bringing water and organic material to Earth, and two, if the proposed path for NASA is to visit an asteroid, having water and organics at the destination makes things a bit more interesting.

24 Themis, a 200-kilometer wide asteroid sits halfway between Mars and Jupiter. Using NASA’s Infrared Telescope Facility on Hawaii’s Mauna Kea, Josh Emery from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and Andrew Rivkin of Johns Hopkins University measured the spectrum of infrared sunlight reflected by the asteroid and found the spectrum consistent with frozen water. They determined that 24 Themis is coated with a thin film of ice. They also detected organic material.

“The organics we detected appear to be complex, long-chained molecules. Raining down on a barren Earth in meteorites, these could have given a big kick-start to the development of life,” Emery said.

Finding ice on the surface of 24 Themis was a surprise because its proximity to the sun causes ice to vaporize. Plus, the surface temperatures are too warm for ice to stick around for a long time.

This image shows the Themis Main Belt which sits between Mars and Jupiter. Asteroid 24 Themis, one of the largest Main Belt asteroids, was examined by University of Tennessee scientist, Josh Emery, who found water ice and organic material on the asteroid's surface. His findings were published in the April 2010 issue of Nature. Credit: Josh Emery/University of Tennessee, Knoxville

“This implies that ice is quite abundant in the interior of 24 Themis and perhaps many other asteroids,” Emery said, and therefore the ice is regularly being replenished.

This might be done by “outgassing” in which ice buried within the asteroid escapes slowly as vapor migrates through cracks to the surface or as vapor escapes quickly and sporadically when 24 Themis is hit by space debris.

The discovery of abundant ice on 24 Themis may mean that water is much more common in the Main Belt of asteroids than previously thought. Since Themis is part of an asteroid “family” that was formed from a large impact and the subsequent fragmentation of a larger body long ago, this scenario means the parent body also had ice and has deep implications for how our solar system formed.

Ice on asteroids may be the answer to the puzzle of where Earth’s water came from, Emery said.

“Asteroids have generally been viewed as being very dry. It now appears that when the asteroids and planets were first forming in the very early Solar System, ice extended far into the Main Belt region,” Emery said. “Extending this refined view to planetary systems around other stars, the building blocks of life — water and organics — may be more common near each star’s habitable zone. The coming years will be truly exciting as astronomers search to discover whether these building blocks of life have worked their magic there as well.”

In choosing a possible destination for future explorations, 24 Themis would perhaps be a good candidate.

The findings are published in the April 29 issue of the journal “Nature.”

Source: EurekAlert

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Submit Your Questions about Apollo, Apollo 13 to NASA Engineer Jerry Woodfill

Our series “13 Things That Saved Apollo 13″ has raised a few questions for some of our readers about spacecraft design, decisions made during the Apollo program, and general questions about spaceflight. Some of you have already left questions as comments on the articles or sent in emails. NASA engineer Jerry Woodfill, who has been featured in this series, has graciously agreed to answer reader questions, and we’ll publish the questions and Jerry’s answers in a Q&A format. Now’s your chance to ask away! Submit your questions in the comment section here, or on any of the “13 Things” articles. Or, you can email your questions to Nancy

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Are We Contaminating Mars?

A new image from the HiRISE camera on MRO showing mounds of south polar layered deposits. Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

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With Mars seemingly the destination of choice in NASA’s future, researchers are taking a look at what kinds of things we want to bring with us when we go to Mars. But also, just as important is what we don’t want to take with us. A new study by the University of Central Florida reveals that bacteria common to spacecraft may be able to survive the harsh environment of Mars long enough to inadvertently contaminate the Red Planet with terrestrial life. So, if we do find life on Mars, the question might be: is it them, or is it us?

The research team replicated Mars-like conditions, such as a very dry environment, low barometric pressure, cold temperatures and intense UV radiation. They exposed one of our favorite bacteria, E. coli (Escherichia coli) – which is a potential spacecraft contaminant– to these conditions for a week, and found it likely would survive but not grow on the surface of Mars if it were shielded from UV irradiation, such as in nooks and crannies in a spacecraft, or even if it was covered by thin layers of dust.

“If long-term microbial survival is possible on Mars, then past and future explorations of Mars may provide the microbial inoculum (biological materials) for seeding Mars with terrestrial life,” said the researchers. “Thus, a diversity of microbial species should be studied to characterize their potential for long term survival on Mars.”

Even though NASA and other space agencies do sterilize spacecraft in an effort to reduce the chance of contamination to other bodies in our solar system, recent studies have shown that microbial species are likely still hitching a ride. And in what might be a more-harm-than-good scenario, the sterile nature of spacecraft assembly facilities ensures that only the most resilient species survive, including acinetobacter, bacillus, escherichia, staphylococcus and streptococcus. So we’re likely sending the worst of the worst kinds of bacteria, at least by human standards.

This research was published in the April 2010 issue of the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology.

Source: American Society for Microbiology

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

13 Things That Saved Apollo 13, Part 11: A Hollywood Movie

The Saturn V rocket for the Apollo 13 mission sits on the launchpad. Credit: NASA

Note: To celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 13 mission, for 13 days, Universe Today will feature “13 Things That Saved Apollo 13,” discussing different turning points of the mission with NASA engineer Jerry Woodfill.

A Hollywood movie depicts three astronauts who survive an accident in space, but their lives hang in the balance as the people in Mission Control at NASA work night and day to figure out a way to bring the spacefarers home safely.

You probably think I’m describing the 1995 movie, “Apollo 13” by producer Ron Howard, but actually this is a recap of a 1969 movie called “Marooned.“

“The correlation between ‘Marooned’ and actual events threatening Apollo 13 is really uncanny,” said NASA engineer Jerry Woodfill. “People may not agree, but in my mind this movie was actually a catalyst to the rescue of Apollo 13.”

Continue reading “13 Things That Saved Apollo 13, Part 11: A Hollywood Movie”
Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

“Data” Narrates Hubble Documentary

The Hubble Space Telescope is one of the greatest technological achievements in our history, and for two decades has astonished us with dynamic images of our solar system and the world beyond. To celebrate this important twenty-year milestone, NASA looks back at the contributions of this extraordinary scientific tool, and the scientists who created it, in a documentary entitled “Hubble: Twenty Years of Discovery.” The movie is narrated by Brent Spiner, Data from Star Trek.

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

13 Things That Saved Apollo 13, Part 10: Duct Tape

The Apollo 13 fix -- complete with duct tape -- of making a square canister fit into a round hole. Credit: NASA

Note: To celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 13 mission, for 13 days, Universe Today will feature “13 Things That Saved Apollo 13,” discussing different turning points of the mission with NASA engineer Jerry Woodfill.

It’s the handy man’s secret weapon, and has become a must-have item for astronauts, too. While duct tape alone didn’t save the Apollo 13 crew, it certainly would have been difficult for them to have survived without it. Even though the accident which crippled the ship took out the two main oxygen tanks in the Service Module, having enough oxygen really wasn’t an issue for the crew. A big problem was having too much carbon dioxide (CO2), which came from the astronauts’ own exhalations.

The Lunar Module had lithium hydroxide canisters to remove the CO2 for two men for two days, but on board were three men trying to survive in the LM lifeboat for four days. However, with a little ingenuity and duct tape, the Apollo Mission Operations Team was able to fit “a square peg in a round hole.”

The Mission Evaluation Room for Apollo. Image courtesy Jerry Woodfill.

“Any of us in the Mission Evaluation Room (MER) might be called upon to assist in an Apollo 13 ‘solution,’” said Jerry Woodfill, who helped design and monitor the Apollo caution and warning systems. The MER was where the spacecraft systems engineers were stationed during a mission, and should a problem arise on any Apollo mission, the “MER-men” were called on for expert advice.

“Should an inexplicable glitch in an alarm occur, I might be consulted,” Woodfill said, “and I was – when the carbon dioxide levels began to threaten the astronauts’ lives, ringing alarms. However, to this day, I am proud that the Command Module’s alarm system was the first warning alerting Mission Control and Lovell’s crew to the life-threatening problem.”

The MER engineering team was led by Don Arabian. “His loud, challenging voice could carry the entire length of the Mission Evaluation Room,” Woodfill said. “Despite his fierce personality, he was a brilliant engineer. No forensic engineer working with any attorney had a greater ability of assessing a spacecraft mission anomaly than Don Arabian.”

Additionally, Woodfill said, Arabian was wholly unorthodox in his management approach. “He feared no man above or below his pay grade. He was honest almost to the point of embarrassment. He would not ‘sugar coat’ any situation Apollo 13 was dealing with as far as the press was concerned.”

Woodfill recalled how Arabian commanded the MER team from the “throne-like” center seat of a long table perpendicular to tables of engineers. “He was, perhaps 20 feet from my station as the Caution and Warning Apollo 13 Engineer. Don never intimidated me, though I had felt nervous about many of my superiors. Don had that same quality of leadership Gene Kranz possessed. He was fair with lower level workers and respected their knowledge.”

For that reason, Woodfill said he felt privileged rather than frightened when summoned to Arabian’s private office to discuss the threat to the lives of the Apollo 13 crew, the build-up of CO2 in the spacecraft.

Woodfill had worked with the environmental system engineers to establish an alarm level based on the percentage of CO2 in the cabin atmosphere. The idea was to use the warning system as an alert for changing the filters.

With the CO2 alarms ringing on Apollo 13, Woodfill met with Arabian. “As I recall there were three calibration curves, one for three different cabin pressures,” Woodfill said. “Arabian began to throw questions at me across his desk: ‘Is the alarm accurate…is the transducer working correctly…what about the calibration?'”

Woodfill had the information on the calibration curves with him, and together, he and Arabian carefully studied it based on the known cabin pressure, the voltage output from the CO2 transducer and the voltage level at which my warning electronics initiated the alarm.

“Yes, the warning system was telling the right story,” Woodfill said.

Jack Swigert works on the CO2 canister during the Apollo 13 mission. Credit: NASA

But there was a problem with the CO2 “scrubbers,” the lithium hydroxide canisters. The cabin air was fed continuously through environmental control equipment, and the lithium hydroxide reacted with the carbon dioxide and trapped it.

“There were but two round lithium hydroxide canisters in the LM, able to provide filtering for two men for two days,” said Woodfill. “With the trip back to Earth at least four days in length, and three men on board, the carbon dioxide content of the cabin air would rise to poisonous levels, and the crew would expire without a solution.”

Each canister had a life of approximately 24 hours with two men on board. Since there were now three men, that life would be somewhat shortened. The round filters were housed in two separate barrels in the lander. One barrel was plumbed into the cabin’s environmental control system, and the other barrel simply stowed the second cartridge. When the first filter was consumed, the crew simply interchanged the filters in the barrels.

“While there were plenty of filters in the Command Module, these were square and wouldn’t fit in the LM barrel,” Woodfill said. “Without some kind of unusual miracle of making a square peg fit into a round hole the crew would not survive.”

The fix for the lithium hydroxide canister is discussed at NASA Mission Control prior to having the astronauts implement the procedure in space. Credit: NASA

The experts in the MER had 24 hours to deal with the challenge and solve the problem. “My recollection of the threat,” said Woodfill, “besides the earlier meeting with Don Arabian, was Don’s voice bellowing from his throne in the mission evaluation room that Tuesday, ‘I need those guys to come up with an answer on the CO2 thing and do it fast!’ He was referring to the ‘tiger team’ led by Ed Smylie, the crew systems manager working the problem.”

Using only the type of equipment and tools the crew had on board –including plastic bags, cardboard, suit hoses, and duct tape — Smylie and his team conceived a configuration that just might work.

“The concept seemed to evolve as all looked on,” Woodfill said. “It was to attach a suit hose into a port which blew air through the hose into an astronaut’s space suit. If the space suit was eliminated and, instead, the output of the hose somehow attached to the square filter, perhaps, the crew could be saved. This, in effect, would bypass the barrel. The air blown through the filter by the suit fan would have no carbon dioxide as it reentered the cabin atmosphere.”

The biggest challenge was attaching the hose into a funnel-like device having a small round inlet hole for the suit hose and a much larger square outlet attached and surrounding the square filter. But the funnel would most likely leak. Added to that difficulty was the hose and plastic bags tended to collapse restricting the air flow through the filter.

“Then the thought came, ‘Use cardboard log book covers to support the plastic,” said Woodfill. “It worked! But more importantly, they had to figure out how the funnel could be fashioned to prevent leaking. Of course…the solution to every conceivable knotty problem has got to be duct tape! And so it was.”

Screen shot from Apollo 13 footage showing Jim Lovell with duct tape.

Woodfill said that duct tape had been stowed on board every mission since early in the Gemini days.

The contraption that Smylie and his team came up with was checked out in the simulators, which worked, and then the team quickly radioed instructions to the crew, carefully leading them through about an hour’s worth of steps.

At a mission debrief, Jack Swigert noted, “At this point in time I think the partial pressure of CO2 was reading about 15 millimeters. We constructed two of these things and I think within an hour was down to 2 tenths.”
Woodfill watched his systems from the MER. “I saw the alarm light go out and it stayed out the rest of the mission.”

As Jim Lovell wrote in his book “Lost Moon, “The contraption wasn’t very handsome, but it worked.”

And it saved Apollo 13.

Next: Part 11: A Hollywood Movie

Earlier articles from the “13 Things That Saved Apollo 13” series:

Introduction

Part 1: Timing

Part 2: The Hatch That Wouldn’t Close

Part 3: Charlie Duke’s Measles

Part 4: Using the LM for Propulsion

Part 5: Unexplained Shutdown of the Saturn V Center Engine

Part 6: Navigating by Earth’s Terminator

Part 7: The Apollo 1 Fire

Part 8: The Command Module Wasn’t Severed

Part 9: Position of the Tanks

Part 10: Duct Tape

Part 11: A Hollywood Movie

Part 12: Lunar Orbit Rendezvous

Part 13: The Mission Operations Team

Also:

Your Questions about Apollo 13 Answered by Jerry Woodfill (Part 1)

More Reader Questions about Apollo 13 Answered by Jerry Woodfill (part 2)

Final Round of Apollo 13 Questions Answered by Jerry Woodfill (part 3)

Never Before Published Images of Apollo 13’s Recovery

Listen to an interview of Jerry Woodfill on the 365 Days of Astronomy podcast.

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Now Witness the Firepower of This Fully Operational (and slow motion) Saturn V

This is so cool – and impressive, most impressive! A 16mm camera located near the base of the Saturn V rocket captured incredible detail about the ignition and lift off of the Apollo 11 mission to the Moon. The high-quality video slows down 30 second of footage to about 8 minutes, but it’s worth every second to watch! The narrator explains it all in great detail. You’ll see the first moments of ignition where the flames light and expand, then get sucked back into the flame trench; and fire and ice all in one video. It really is awesome!

Source: Huffington Post

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Final Shuttle Flight Will Be Delayed at Least Until November for AMS Switchout

Mission patch for STS-134, which will carry the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer to the ISS. Credit: NASA

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A switch-out of the magnet for a much anticipated particle physics experiment on the International Space Station will force NASA to delay the final flight of the space shuttle until at least November, and change which orbiter and crew will fly the final space shuttle mission. The $2 billion Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer was scheduled to head to the ISS in July of this year, but recent thermal vacuum tests showed the superconducting magnet that was originally planned to power the experiment would have only worked 2-3 years. An ordinary magnet, which doesn’t need to be super-cooled will last for a decade or more – and given the ISS has been given a longer life, it seems to be the best option. “I don’t think it’s correct to go there for three years where there is a chance to do physics for 18 years,” said Dr. Samuel Ting, AMS Principal Investor, in an article in the New York Times.

NASA officials said today they still are evaluating the exact day in November, as they must schedule the mission to fit around other resupply and crew flights to the ISS, with the Russian Progress and Soyuz vehicles.

The AMS is designed to search for various types of unusual matter by measuring cosmic rays, and will help researchers study the formation of the universe and search for evidence of dark matter and antimatter.

Changing the magnet means the AMS won’t arrive at Kennedy Space Center before August and shuttle workers need time to get the payload ready to fly inside the shuttle’s cargo bay.

Atlantis at the pad for the STS-132 mission. Credit: Alan Walters (awaltersphoto.com) for Universe Today

The upcoming flight of the shuttle Atlantis (STS-132) remains on schedule for launch no earlier than May 14. But Endeavour was scheduled for the AMS flight in July, which will now move to no earlier than November. Discovery’s STS-133 flight (bringing up the Leonardo MPLM as a permanent storage module) stays on the schedule for September 16. So while the schedule changes, numerical order is restored!

Another possible change to the shuttle schedule would be if the decision to fly what is called STS-335, the Launch On Need mission, a shuttle ready to go as a rescue ship for the last scheduled mission. Many shuttle supporters say since Atlantis would be ready to fly that it should fly. No decision has yet been made, however.

Even if the final flight or flights get delayed into 2011, funding is not a problem, as Congress anticipated possible delays and provided funds for shuttle operations into early next year.

Liquid helium would have been used cool the superconducting magnet’s temperature to near absolute zero. But tests showed the helium would dissipate withing 2-3 years, leaving the seven-ton experiment useless. The ISS has been extended to at least 2020, and possibly as long as 2028.

Sources: New York Times, Orlando Sentinel