Tom's WEB Blog

Welcome home Endeavour! Job well done!

Space shuttle Atlantis landed safely in California on Sunday, bringing home seven triumphant astronauts after their successful service call on the Hubble Space Telescope. After two days of delay due to storms, the third time was the charm for Atlantis as it touched down on the dry lakebed runway at Edwards Air Force Base at 11:40 a.m. EDT to end a 13-day mission to the 19-year-old Hubble. Rainy weather thwarted the shuttle's attempts to land in Florida earlier on Friday and Saturday. Returning to Earth with Altman were pilot Greg C. Johnson and mission specialists Michael Good, Megan McArthur, John Grunsfeld, Michael Massimino and Andrew Feustel. A pressure glitch in one of Atlantis' auxiliary power units set off an alarm during landing, but was never an issue, mission managers said. Altman and his crew spent just under a week linked with Hubble, where spacewalking astronauts installed two new instruments, replaced aging batteries and gyroscopes, and revived two long-dead instruments that were never designed to be opened, let alone repaired, in space. The result: A rejuvenated Hubble more powerful than ever before, one that is capable of peering back to when the universe, now 13.7 billion years old, was just a nascent 500 million years of age. The space telescope's new instruments and repaired tools should continue its work to probe the structure of the universe, black holes and the existence of dark energy. Atlantis' last mission cost about $1.1 billion to fix Hubble, though nearly $10 billion has been invested in the telescope since its inception and 1990 launch. NASA will have to pay an extra $1.8 million to ferry Atlantis back to its hangar here at the Kennedy Space Center, a process which should take a week and depends on good weather. The shuttle orbited Earth 197 times and flew 5.3 million miles during the trek, which marked NASA's 126th shuttle flight and the 30th mission for Atlantis. NASA plans to fly up to eight more shuttle missions to complete construction of the International Space Station. Well done!

Looking good for around 2:00pm Monday EST.

STS-125: Mission to Service NASA's Hubble Space Telescope
Veteran astronaut Scott Altman will command the final space shuttle mission to service NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, and retired Navy Capt. Gregory C. Johnson will serve as pilot. Mission specialists rounding out the crew are: veteran spacewalkers John Grunsfeld and Mike Massimino, and first-time space fliers Andrew Feustel, Michael Good and Megan McArthur. During the 11-day mission's five spacewalks, astronauts will install two new instruments, repair two inactive ones and perform the component replacements that will keep the telescope functioning into at least 2014. In addition to the originally scheduled work, Atlantis also will carry a replacement Science Instrument Command and Data Handling Unit for Hubble. Astronauts will install the unit on the telescope, removing the one that stopped working on Sept. 27, 2008, delaying the servicing mission until the replacement was ready.

For the first time since July 2001, two shuttles are on the launch pads at the same time at NASA's Kennedy Space Center. Space shuttle Endeavour completed a 4.2-mile journey to Launch Pad 39B on Friday. Endeavour will stand by at pad B in the unlikely event that a rescue mission is necessary during space shuttle Atlantis' upcoming mission to repair NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, targeted to launch Oct. 10. After Endeavour is cleared from its duty as a rescue spacecraft, it will be moved to Launch Pad 39A for the STS-126 mission to the International Space Station. That flight is targeted for launch Nov. 12th.

Interesting article, but I doubt they will continue beyond 1 additional year.

Space shuttle Discovery landed safely back on Earth Saturday to wrap up a two-week mission that delivered a new Japanese laboratory to the International Space Station. The shuttle touched down on a NASA runway here at the Kennedy Space Center at 11:15 a.m. . Discovery and it's six-man, one-woman crew delivered a new crewmember, spare Russian space toilet parts and the massive $1 billion Kibo research module for the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency while docked at the orbiting laboratory. The astronauts launched May 31 and completed 217 trips around Earth during their 5.7 million-mile construction flight. Weighing in at some 32,000 pounds, Japan’s Kibo (which means “hope” in Japanese) is 37 feet long, about the size of a large tour bus and the largest room ever launched to the space station. It has two small windows, a 33-foot main robotic arm and a small airlock for passing experiments out to a porch-like external platform slated to launch next year. With Kibo’s installation, the space station is about 71 percent complete, weighs about 612,000 pounds and has a living area about the size of the interior of a 747 jumbo jet, according to NASA and station crew. When complete, the station is slated to have about as much room as a five bedroom home and rival a U.S. football field in length, NASA has said. Today’s landing marked the end of NASA’s 123rd space shuttle mission and the 26th construction flight to the space station. Discovery made its 35th trip to space during the mission, the third shuttle flight this year to deliver a new orbital room to the high-flying station. NASA plans to fly 10 more shuttle flights to complete the space station and overhaul the Hubble Space Telescope before retiring its aging three-orbiter fleet in 2010. The Hubble mission - the final servicing flight to the orbital observatory - is currently slated to liftoff on Oct. 8 pending the repair of its Pad 39A launch site here, which was damaged during Discovery’s launch. The successful STS-124 spaceflight marked NASA’s third of up to five shuttle flights this year, with the Hubble serving mission and a fourth flight to the space station remaining. It was the 10th mission since the 2003 Columbia tragedy.

When the space shuttle Discovery lifted off Saturday, it left some serious destruction in its wake. NASA inspectors found damage of an "unprecedented" magnitude at Discovery's Florida launch site. Strewn all over the seaside Launch Pad 39A area at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., inspectors found bricks and mortar from the trench designed to catch the flames that shoot out beneath the shuttle when it launches. The debris flew as far as the perimeter fence 1,500 feet away from the pad. NASA officials say they are unsure what caused the destruction, the level of which has been unseen in previous launches, but they have already assembled an investigation team to look into the issue further. In addition to being unusual, the pad damage is somewhat worrying because NASA has only two shuttle launch pads and both must be in working order for its next planned mission, the STS-125 flight to overhaul the Hubble Space Telescope, to launch in October as planned. Unlike current shuttle flights to the International Space Station, where astronauts can take refuge if their spacecraft is damaged until a new one can be launched, the mission to Hubble has no such safe haven. So instead, NASA needs a second shuttle on a second launch pad to serve as a rescue ship. For STS-125, NASA plans to prepare a primary shuttle to launch from Pad 39A, as well as a backup rescue shuttle that would be ready to launch from its other pad, 39B, if needed. So giving up on Pad 39A completely is not an option. Switching to Pad 39B as the primary launch pad would also present issues, as this site is currently being readied for use in NASA's next manned spaceflight endeavor, the Constellation program. Ground crews have already begun converting Pad 39B from a shuttle launch site to the liftoff pad for the Ares I rocket, the booster intended to carry the capsule-based shuttle successor Orion to space. The last time this pad was used for a shuttle launch was on Dec. 9, 2006, for the liftoff of Discovery's STS-116 mission. Both launch pads date back to the days of the Apollo program in the 1960s, so it's possible that the site is just getting old, NASA officials said. It will take more investigation to determine the reason for the destruction, they added. Despite the puzzling nature of the issue, NASA said they cannot foresee it causing a delay to either of the two remaining shuttle flights scheduled for 2008. The shuttle Atlantis is slated to launch toward Hubble on Oct. 8, with its sister ship Endeavour to follow on Nov. 10 on a space station-bound flight. Though the damage may raise questions about future missions, it should not have any effect on the shuttle currently flying. Mission managers do not believe any of the flying wreckage hit Discovery as it was launching to cause harm to the craft. Meanwhile, Discovery's current STS-124 mission to the space station is going well. Commanded by veteran shuttle flyer Mark Kelly, the shuttle arrived at the station on Monday to begin about 10 days of joint work to install a new Japanese laboratory the size of a large tour bus, fix the orbiting lab's space toilet and swap out one member of the station's three-man crew. Two spacewalking astronauts help deliver a major new addition, the giant Japanese Kibo laboratory, to the International Space Station (ISS) Tuesday in the first of three excursions planned for their mission. Spacewalkers Mike Fossum and Ron Garan also tested methods of cleaning the orbital lab's sticky solar wing joint and retrieved their shuttle's inspection boom during their nearly seven-hour venture outside the station. The astronauts officially began their spacewalk about an hour late at 12:22 p.m. EDT because of a communications glitch in Fossum's spacesuit, which was emitting a loud squeal. The crew was able to reconnect a cable and fix the problem. The fix delayed the start of the spacewalk about 50 minutes past its planned beginning, but otherwise had no effect on the six-hour, 48-minute excursion. The whole crew had a role in the spacewalk, with pilot Ken Ham choreographing the venture from inside the station, and mission specialists Karen Nyberg, Akihiko Hoshide and Greg Chamitoff driving the shuttle and space station robotic arms. The spacewalk began on the 43rd anniversary of the first-ever U.S. spacewalk, a 23-minute excursion by astronaut Ed White during the Gemini 4 mission on June 3, 1965. The spacewalkers began their trip outside by retrieving Discovery's sensor-tipped heat shield inspection pole from the ISS. Usually, shuttles carry their own inspection poles, which attach to the shuttle's robotic arm and are used to scan heat tiles for signs of damage. In this case, however, Discovery couldn't fit the 50-foot boom in its payload bay, which was crowded by Kibo, so the previous shuttle mission, Endeavour's STS-123 flight last March, left the boom outside the station for Discovery. After viewing photographs taken of the shuttle's belly right before it docked at the space station, mission managers said they have cleared the shuttle for landing in the case of an emergency. They have also determined that no further focused inspection will required, Mission management chair LeRoy Cain said today after the spacewalk. Once the two spacewalkers released the restraints holding the pole in place on the space station's truss, the inspection tool was picked up by the space station's robotic arm, steered by Hoshide, and passed off to the shuttle arm, driven by Nyberg. Then Nyberg safely stowed the boom away, where it will stay until Friday when it is due to be used to perform a detailed inspection of Discovery's heat shield. After recovering their shuttle's inspection pole, the two spacewalkers set to work preparing the new Kibo module to be installed on the station. It was secured in tight in Discovery's payload bay, so the bolts and straps that held it in had to be removed before it could be unberthed. Once the spacewalkers had freed up the Japanese lab, Japanese astronaut Hoshide picked it up with the station's robotic arm and carried it "carefully, methodically and glacially" over to its new, permanent perch on the ISS's Harmony node. At about 6:15 p.m. 'Hope' finally reached Harmony, and about half an hour later the two modules attached. By 7:01 p.m. the lab was finally secured on its permanent roost. While the station arm was moving Kibo across the sky, the two spacewalkers moved on to their planned inspection of a troublesome joint on one of the space station's solar panel wings. The joint, called the Solar Alpha Array Rotary Joint (SARJ), is a huge gear that serves to rotate the station's outboard solar wings like a paddlewheel to keep them facing the sun to draw in as much pressure. The starboard joint has been clogged by metallic grit lodged inside it, which has damaged its rotating ring and caused odd power spikes and vibrations that were first detected last October. Fossum tested cleaning techniques, including scraping the area with a dentist's pick-like tool and using a grease gun to lubricate the gear and dislodge debris. He also helped determine that one area of interest, an apparent divot in the gear's metal ring, was actually etched into the surface rather than raised above it. If NASA decides the cleaning techniques are successful, they plan to send a later mission to use them on a spacewalk to perform a more thorough cleaning. Meanwhile, Garan worked to reinstall a previously-removed set of bearings that the gear rings roll on. With one spacewalk in the books, Discovery's STS-124 crew and the station's Expedition 17 astronauts are now looking ahead to officially opening the new Kibo laboratory on Wednesday. They are also set to fix the station's balky space toilet, a Russian-built commode that has been acting up lately.