Ben Cooper/Spaceflight Now
Discovery heads for the launch pad at sunrise.
Posted on 10/01/2007 5:04:01 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
A powerful Apollo-era crawler-transporter slowly carried the shuttle Discovery from the Vehicle Assembly Building to launch complex 39A today for work to ready the ship for blastoff Oct. 23 on a complex space station assembly mission.
The three-mile trip began around 6:47 a.m. and the orbiter's mobile launch platform was "hard down" at the pad by around 1:15 p.m.
NASA had hoped to move the ship to the pad last week, but the trip was delayed after engineers discovered a hydraulic leak in the shuttle's right main landing gear strut. Four seals in the strut mechanism were replaced, clearing the way for rollout Saturday - sooner than expected - but another delay was ordered because of threatening weather.
Even with the slips, Discovery processing manager Stephanie Stilson told reporters today engineers still have two full days of contingency time to handle unexpected problems between now and Oct. 23, thanks in large part to changes intended to streamline the loading of rocket fuel for the ship's maneuvering thrusters.
"As usual, you hit stumbling blocks along the way, scheduling issues, weather and so forth, but overall the vehicle looks real good, everything we have scheduled is laid out well," Stilson said. "We'd like to have more contingency (time), we'd always like to have more. That way, you just have that much more assurance you're going to make your launch date. But we feel comfortable with two (days) and when we're ready to go, we'll go. If we can't make it on the 23rd, we'll do it as soon as we can. But right now, the 23rd is looking like a good day for us."
The goal of Discovery's mission is to deliver the multi-hatch Harmony module to the international space station, a pressurized compartment that ultimately will be attached to the front of the Destiny laboratory module to serve as the anchor point for European and Japanese research modules.
The Discovery astronauts plan to stage five spacewalks to attach and outfit Harmony, to move a set of stowed solar arrays to the far left end of the station's main power truss and to test shuttle heat shield repair techniques.
"I don't think there's ever been an astronaut who doesn't consider their flight the most dramatic, exciting, complex mission ever. But ours is!" lead spacewalker Scott Parazynski joked in a recent interview with CBS News.
"A couple of years ago, I looked at the assembly sequence and looked at all the tasks that are out there and I thought the P6 (solar array) relocation flight, that was the most audacious thing we've ever done and I would love to be on that flight. ... It really is an operational challenge."
Parazynski and his crewmates - commander Pam Melroy, pilot George Zamka, flight engineer Stephanie Wilson, Doug Wheelock, Italian astronaut Paolo Nespoli and space station astronaut Dan Tani - plan to strap in aboard Discovery on Oct. 10 for a dress rehearsal countdown.
That same day, the space station's next commander and flight engineer - NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson and Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko - are scheduled for launch aboard a Soyuz spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. They will be joined by Malaysian physician Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor.
Shukor, a guest cosmonaut flying under an arrangement with the Russian government, will return to Earth on Oct. 21 with outgoing Expedition 15 commander Fyodor Yurchikhin and flight engineer Oleg Kotov. NASA astronaut Clay Anderson, launched to the station aboard Atlantis in June, will remain aboard the lab complex with Whitson and Malenchenko until Tani arrives to replace him. Anderson will return to Earth aboard Discovery.
Harmony will be temporarily attached to the left port of the Unity module, which connects the U.S. and Russian segments of the station. Initial outfitting will be carried out during spacewalks by Parazynski, Wheelock, Whitson and Tani. After Discovery departs, the shuttle docking port on the front end of Destiny will be disconnected and attached to Harmony. The new module then will be moved to its permanent home on the front of Destiny.
Whitson and Tani plan to stage two more spacewalks Nov. 13 and 17 to hook up power and data cables and ammonia coolant lines leading back to radiators on the station's main truss. At that point, the stage will be set for launch of the European Space Agency's Columbus research module in early December.
"The significance of this particular mission is big, we're doing many, many complex things and again, allowing the international partners to then bring their hardware up and join the station," Tani said in an interview. "Once the shuttle leaves, we do some very complex robotic operations and maneuver (Harmony) over to its final location.
"And then I would say the big technical part of my stay on station is the EVAs that will follow, where we take fluid trays that have been stored on the station for years and we install them on the lab to provide cooling and power to the node so it can offer it to the Columbus module and the JEM (Japanese Experiment Module).
"We talk about this as a 45-day shuttle mission in terms of pace," Tani said. "Shuttle missions are scheduled down to 10-minute increments and generally, station timelines are a bit more relaxed. But we are not. We are all 'go' from the moment of launch to probably until (shuttle Atlantis) comes to get me to bring me home, we are go, go, go."
Discovery heads for the launch pad at sunrise.
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Technicians check and a technician makes photographs of the International Space Station module, Harmony, at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., Tuesday, Sept. 18, 2007. Harmony, a utility hub, provides air, electrical power, water and other systems to the space station and will travel aboard space shuttle Discovery, scheduled to launch on Oct. 23.(AP Photo/John Raoux)
Space Ping
The Ares replacement for the Shuttle has this now:
the Orion Emergency Egress System, a group of multi-passenger cars on a set of rails reminiscent of a roller coaster.
Looks like an improvement over the slide for life wire they used in Apollo.
OEES is what they say when they tip over the edge of the tower at 388 feet and freefall for a while.
The Atlas 5 is a hot rocket
0130 GMT (9:30 p.m. EDT Wed.)
“As America celebrates the 60th anniversary of the Air Force, today’s launch of the WGS satellite is a fitting tribute,” said Jim Sponnick, ULA vice president of Atlas programs. “ULA is proud of its continuing role of providing reliable and cost effective assured access to space for the Air Force’s critical missions.”
0120 GMT (9:20 p.m. EDT Wed.)
Tonight’s launch has been a complete success, United Launch Alliance has announced. And ground controllers have acquired the first signals from the WGS satellite.
Astronauts arrive for launch
Discovery’s crew has arrived at Kennedy Space Center for launch Tuesday on what many observers consider the most challenging and complex space station assembly flight yet attempted. Commander Pam Melroy, speaking at the runway, said the crew agreed with the decision to press ahead with launch despite a recommendation from an independent engineering group to replace three wing leading edge panels.
NASA’s shuttle launch team started Discovery’s countdown today for a launch attempt Tuesday on what many consider the most challenging space station assembly mission yet attempted. Forecasters are predicting a 60 percent chance of good weather.
The countdown began on time at 2 p.m. NASA Test Director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson said earlier today there were no technical issues of any significance at launch pad 39A.
They have a big load to deliver and install, they ought to go Bigelow, The module is a real piece of work..
and 60% chance of good weather is really 40% chance of no launch weather. ;-)
The Soyuz made a ballistic reentry, which means it landed a minute early and quite a bit short. Kind of a rough ride.
The new motors are even stronger. It will be interesting to see how they develop.
I have read somewhere though that the F1’s were better, but the newer ones are more fuel efficent.
I could be wrong, just my $.02 worth though......
The Ares motors should be in that range but they burn hydrogen rather than kerosene for reduced carbon footprint. “The five RS-68 engines serve as the core stage propulsion for Ares V”, which are derived from the Delta IV. Second stage is based on the Saturn V J-2 motor.
Again?
I thought they would have fixed the problem after the first time, when the ISS crew had to take spare Soyuz because the shuttles were grounded again after Columbia. That Soyuz came in "hot" and were off something like 200 miles (kms?).
Yes. Last time was 2003. Everybody’s fine, they made a point of saying.
the “old” Saturn 5 engines
Oh yeah, quite a show when those babies lit up and didn’t they count as a seismic event? One heck of a rumble,, we had a couple laying around somewhere for a while , could have kept building them,, but the moon folks didn’t want us back there for awhile, it seems.
The brainiacs can't come up with a way to provision another docking space for a second Soyuz?
Budget, or did they internally admit that the ISS was a big mistake, diverting funds from better projects?
A number of other countries have bailed or severely cut back their scientific "donations".
here we go:
MONDAY, OCTOBER 22, 2007
Space shuttle Discovery is getting closer and closer to liftoff on the daunting mission to deliver the space station’s Harmony connecting module and move the massive Port 6 solar array power truss.
“Our systems are all good, we’re in great shape and there are no issues we’re tracking,” said NASA Test Director Steve Payne told reporters this morning.
The gantry-like rotating service structure was pulled back to reveal Discovery shortly after 3 p.m. this afternoon, kicking off several hours of work to secure the pad for Tuesday’s launch.
Other activities tonight will include configuring all of the switches in the cockpit, activating the shuttle’s three power-producing fuel cells and clearing the blast danger area of non-essential personnel.
At 12:13 a.m., the countdown will be going into the two-hour planned hold at the T-minus 6 hour mark. The management team will be meeting to review the progress of the countdown, look at the weather and give the official “go” to begin fueling. The three-hour fueling process should begin around 2:13 a.m. when the count resumes.
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