CBS NEWS Coverage of STS-129

12:50 PM, 10/30/09, Update: Shuttle Atlantis cleared for Nov. 16 launch

Editor's Note...
Prior commitments prevented me from posting this story immediately following the flight readiness review. My apologies for the delay.

NASA managers met at the Kennedy Space Center Thursday and tentatively cleared the shuttle Atlantis for launch Nov. 16 on a three-spacewalk mission to deliver nearly 15 tons of spare parts and supplies to the International Space Station.

"In terms of being the flight that brings up all the spares for station, this is really full," said Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA's director of space operations. "They've done a tremendous job of really outfitting station with all the spares that are going to be needed, essentially through its lifetime. This flight, and a couple of the other shuttle flights that come later, really set us up very well for kind of the end of the shuttle servicing era."

NASA was able to reserve two days on the U.S. Air Force Eastern range - Nov. 16 and 17 - in a launch window that extends, in theory, through Nov. 19 and possibly Nov. 20. NASA got the launch slot after the Air Force agreed to delay, if necessary, launch of a United Launch Alliance Delta 4 rocket carrying a military communications satellite.

As it now stands, a ULA Atlas 5 rocket carrying an Intelsat communications station is scheduled for launch Nov. 14, with Nov. 15 as a backup. If the Atlas takes off on time, Atlantis will have a shot at launching on Nov. 16 with the Delta 4 following suit on Nov. 18. If the Atlas is delayed a day, the shuttle will slip to Nov. 17 and the Delta to Nov. 19.

If Atlantis doesn't get off by Nov. 17 - and if the Air Force agrees to another delay for the Delta 4 - the shuttle could have additional launch opportunities Nov. 18 and 19. But as it now stands, NASA only has two days to get Atlantis off the ground. After that, the shuttle launch would slip to Dec. 6 because of heating constraints related to the space station's orbit.

Mike Moses, shuttle integration manager at the Kennedy Space Center, said Atlantis is in good shape and should be ready for flight by Nov. 16 if engineers can close out a handful of open issues.

One on-going investigation involves the effects of vibrations and acoustics associated with startup of the shuttle's three hydrogen-fueled main engines. Another involves the strength of key brackets used to secure the shuttle's potty inside the crew module against worst-case crash loads.

The engine startup acoustics issue first came to light after the October 1998 shuttle flight that launched former Sen. John Glenn back into orbit. During liftoff, the door covering the shuttle's braking parachute fell off, prompting an investigation that ultimately led to liftoff acoustics.

Additional instrumentation was added to subsequent flights and the data seemed to show sound levels were in the expected range. But in a subsequent analysis, engineers realized the way the sensors were being calibrated did not adequately take into account how the vibration of the pressure transducers themselves interacted with the sound they were supposed to measure.

More accurate calibration showed the acoustic environment at engine startup "was a lot more severe than we thought," Moses said. "It was definitely above what our design limit was."

Engineers then began analyzing shuttle structures to make sure they could safely withstand the unexpected acoustic environment.

"At the end of the day, we had one tile, literally one tile, that did not have a factor of safety greater than 1.4," Moses said. "And we're going to go bond some gap fillers around there so the load gets shared across a couple of tiles and that'll take care of that one tile.

"The systems underneath the structure, like all the plumbing lines and the wiring and all that, we vibe test that but we don't vibrate it to failure like we would on a primary structural member. So the teams are looking at that to see where their limits are, how they're certified and to see what margins they have. And we've cleared all but a few subsystems. They just need a little more time to go through the math on the subsystems. But those should clear within the next week or two."

One area of concern concerns bolts that hold maneuvering jet extensions, called "stingers," on the back of the shuttle's orbital maneuvering system rocket pods.

"The stinger is the little part that sticks out of the back where all the RCS (reaction control system) thrusters are housed," Moses said. "It's held onto the OMS pod with four separate attach bolts. One of them carries a load in three separate axes at launch. That one shows some negative margins and we have some homework to do."

But the safety factor built into the shuttle design assumed a worst-case acoustic environment for every launch and engineers now know the environment is highly variable.

"The acoustic environment back there is a very dynamic thing and it's very hard to know that you're getting that same environment every single time," Moses said. "In fact, you don't get that environment every single time. How you take that and then apply that to a lifetime projection on your parts is where we're doing our math to make sure we're not being too conservative, we're not being too aggressive with our calculations."

Boroscope inspections of the bolt in question show no cracks, at least to the limits of the instrument's resolution. Engineers also are tearing down qualification hardware built in the early days of the shuttle program that was subjected to vibrations simulating 100 missions to look for any signs of undue stress.

"So that's the big work in front of us," Moses said.

Other topics covered during Thursday's executive-level flight readiness review included the threat of impacts from debris eroding off thermal blanket around the nozzles of the shuttle's solid-fuel boosters - engineers do not believe it poses a significant threat - and an on-going assessment of the foam insulation used on the shuttle's external tank.

An unusual amount of foam loss from the central intertank region of the shuttle's external tank earlier this year prompted additional testing, but Moses said Atlantis' tank appears to be in good shape. Likewise, non-destructive examination shows the foam used to cover so-called ice-frost ramps that hold external pressurization lines in place is solid, without the voids that can lead to foam shedding.

"So a real good story from the ET team," Moses said.

Atlantis will be flying with an additional camera in the cockpit that will be looking up during ascent, toward the ice-frost ramps on the liquid oxygen section of the tank, to give engineers a bird's eye view of how the foam behaves during the shuttle's climb out of the dense lower atmosphere.

"We'll be able to see four or five of the ice-frost ramps out of window No. 4 and that'll be very interesting data for us, it'll help us understand when the ice-frost ramps degrade and how they come apart," said Gerstenmaier. "Very likely, we should expect to see some foam shedding, some popcorn coming off of those regions. So if you see it in the video during ascent, I wouldn't be surprised by that."

As for the shuttle's toilet, Moses said the issue involves a bracket used to help anchor it to the crew module structure. The module is design to withstand crash loads of up to 20 times the force of gravity, or 20 Gs, but engineers discovered cracks from high-cycle fatigue in toilet brackets from two other shuttles.

Playing it safe, engineers replaced the bracket in Atlantis. But in the analysis, it was determined that the bracket was "under designed and cannot handle a crash load," Moses said. "We want anything in the crew compartment to be able to withstand a 20-G crash load."

For Atlantis' flight, engineers were able to show that a new bracket was unlikely to fail in a single flight even if a crack developed.

"I think we're going to do some ultimate, actual load testing and show we're probably somewhere above 10Gs, probably not quite at 20 Gs," Moses said. "So we're going to take a waiver to say we're not going to quite make our 20 Gs but for the normal design case and for a pretty severe crash landing, we'll be fine with this bracket."

For future flights, NASA plans to use a redesigned bracket.

"The simplest redesign is just to make it out of titanium instead of aluminum," Moses said. "When you look at it, it's actually a pretty thin, flimsy little part and it has to withhold something like 12,000 pounds of force in a 20-G crash load."

The Atlantis astronauts - commander Charles Hobaugh, pilot Barry Wilmore, Leland Melvin and spacewalkers Robert Satcher, Michael Foreman and Randolph Bresnik - plan to strap in aboard the shuttle Nov. 3 for a dress-rehearsal countdown that will set the stage for launch.

11:55 AM, 10/23/09, Update: NASA managers hopeful about Nov. 16 launch target

Editor's Note...
Portions of the following update were posted on the Breaking Space News page Oct. 19.

NASA managers met Monday, Oct. 19, and agreed the Ares I-X flight was the agency's top near-term priority. Because many engineers supporting the Ares test also are needed for shuttle processing, work to ready Atlantis for launch on the next space station assembly and resupply mission will be stretched out a bit. NASA had been targeting Nov. 12 for launch, but managers agreed Monday on Nov. 16 as a more realistic "no-earlier-than" launch date, officials said.

As of this writing, NASA does not have an official slot on the U.S. Air Force Eastern Range launch schedule. A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket carrying an Intelsat communications satellite has the range booked for launch tries Nov. 14-15 and a Delta 4 carrying a military communications satellite is scheduled for launch Nov. 18.

Because of time needed to reconfigure range tracking and telemetry systems to support a different launch operation, the Delta would have to slip for NASA to have a shot at launching Atlantis on Nov. 16 at 2:28 p.m. EST. NASA managers are hopeful ongoing negotiations will, in fact, be successful.

Even if the Air Force agrees to delay the Delta launch, NASA will have a relatively short launch window. Because of temperature constraints related to the space station's orbit, Atlantis must take off by Nov. 19 at the latest or the flight will be delayed to Dec. 6. The December launch window closes after Dec. 11 because of a conflict with the planned launch and docking of a Russian Soyuz spacecraft carrying three station crew members.

Hoping for the best, Atlantis' six crew members flew to the Kennedy Space Center on Oct. 19 to review emergency procedures at pad 39A. A dress-rehearsal countdown, originally planned for Wednesday, has been delayed to Nov. 3 because of the decision to prioritize the Ares I-X launch and the resulting slip of the shuttle's no-earlier-than launch date from Nov. 12 to Nov. 16.

03:55 PM, 9/29/09, Update: NASA managers assess Atlantis launch options

Two upcoming satellite launches, a pair of meteor showers, multiple Russian missions and tight launch windows are causing potential headaches for NASA planners looking ahead to the next shuttle mission in November.

NASA is readying the shuttle Atlantis for roll out to pad 39A on Oct. 13 and launch around Nov. 12 on a mission to deliver critical spare parts to the International Space Station. But the ship's nine-day launch window currently is in conflict with a pair of unmanned satellite launches, one a commercial mission and the other military.

The U.S. Eastern Range, which provides tracking and telemetry support for all rockets launched from Florida, can only support one mission at a time and it operates on a first-come, first-served basis.

A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 carrying an Intelsat communications satellite is currently booked on the range for a launch Nov. 14 with a backup opportunity the next day. A ULA Delta 4 rocket carrying a military communications satellite has the range booked Nov. 17 and 18.

NASA had hoped to launch Atlantis on Nov. 9, but that would have required Russian space managers to move up the launch of a new docking module. The Russians were unable to comply and the docking module remains scheduled for launch Nov. 10.

While those discussions were going on, the Atlas-Intelsat team booked the range for Nov. 14.

Because it takes a day or so to reconfigure range equipment to support a different launch, NASA could end up with just one day or so at the end of its window if the unmanned launches stay on track.

NASA officials are hopeful the conflict can be resolved but as of this writing, the unmanned missions remain on the range and launch preparations are continuing.

Even if the first satellite launch moves and Atlantis takes off on Nov. 12, the Leonids meteor shower is expected to peak on Nov. 17, the day the crew plans to carry out the mission's second spacewalk. Some 300 "shooting stars" per hour are expected at the shower's peak. While the shower is not believed to pose a threat to the shuttle, NASA planners are assessing whether the spacewalk can safely proceed as planned if Atlantis is able to take off on time.

The shuttle's launch window closes Nov. 20, the start of a so-called beta-angle cutout. During such cutouts, the angle between the sun and the space station's orbit results in temperature issues for the docked shuttle-station "stack." The upcoming cutout ends on Dec. 5 and a fresh shuttle launch window opens on Dec. 6.

If Atlantis is unable to take off in November, NASA will have to contend with the Geminids meteor shower during the December launch window, a shower that poses a more significant risk to the shuttle. Even though icy debris from the Leonids travels twice as fast as the rocky fragments that make up the Geminids, the latter is spread out over several days while the former is concentrated over just a few hours.

"Leonids of the same mass have four times the striking power of the Geminids," said Bill Cooke, an astronomer with the Meteoroid Environments Office at the Marshall Space Flight Center. "But ... the Geminids have a higher flux enhancement than the Leonids because it's such a big shower."

Made up of icy debris from comet Tempel-Tuttle, the Leonids are expected to produce some 300 shooting stars per hour at their peak around 2:43 p.m. EST on Nov. 17 when Earth will plow through the debris stream. Cooke said initial predictions called for up to 500 per hour and the revised rate represents an "outburst" as opposed to a "storm."

In contrast, the Geminids are believed to be made up of rocky fragments from a body known as Phaethon, which appears to be an asteroid. This year's shower is expected to peak around midnight Dec. 13-14 at a normal rate of around 120 events per hour.

"The Leonids will be an outburst with a strength 10 to 20 times normal, but as far as the environment is concerned, the Geminids meteor shower still has more meteors per area per time than the Leonids do," Cooke said. "The Geminid stream is much wider. The Leonids stream is nice and compact."

Shuttles have flown before during the Leonids and Geminids showers, but NASA planners are re-assessing the risks associated with impacts. In the case of the Leonids, sources say the concern is more about whether a spacewalk might need to be delayed if the shuttle manages to launch on time. With the Geminids, analysts will be looking at whether the shuttle should even be in orbit.

A senior NASA manager said Tuesday a slip to December for Atlantis would not have any major downstream impacts on other upcoming shuttle flights. But the window is short and closes on Dec. 13, the start of a so-called Soyuz cutout.

The Russians plan to launch three station crew members in a Soyuz capsule on Dec. 21 and if the shuttle took off after Dec. 13, the ship would still be there when the Soyuz arrives, which would violate joint safety guidelines.

If Atlantis misses the November and December launch windows, the flight would slip into early 2010.

The shuttle Discovery dropped out of orbit and swooped to a flawless California landing Friday to close out a successful space station resupply mission.

Shuttle commander Frederick "C.J." Sturckow and pilot Kevin Ford fired the shuttle's twin braking rockets at 7:47:37 p.m. EDT to drop the ship out of orbit for an hourlong descent to Edwards Air Force Base.

The shuttle Discovery banks to line up on runway 22 at
Edwards Air Force Base. (Photo: NASA TV)

After a steep descent across the Los Angeles basin, Sturckow took over manual control at an altitude of about 50,000 feet above the Mojave Desert landing site and guided the spaceplane through a sweeping 213-degree right overhead turn to line up on runway 22.

As Sturckow pulled the shuttle's nose up just before touchdown, Ford deployed the ship's three main landing gear and the spaceplane settled to a tire-smoking touchdown at 8:53:25 p.m.

"Houston, Discovery, wheels stopped," Sturckow radioed a few moments later as Discovery rolled to a holt.

"Copy, wheels stopped," replied astronaut Eric Boe in mission control at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. "Welcome home, Discovery. Congratulations on an extremely successful mission, stepping up science to a new level on the International Space Station."

Discovery, seconds from touchdown. (Photo: NASA TV)

Mission duration was 13 days 20 hours 53 minutes and 45 seconds for a voyage spanning 5.7 million miles and 219 complete orbits since blastoff from launch complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center on Aug. 28 at 11:59:37 p.m.

Sturckow, Ford and four of their five crewmates - flight engineer Jose Hernandez, Patrick Forrester, John "Danny" Olivas and European Space Agency astronaut Christer Fuglesang - doffed their pressure suits for a traditional walk-around inspection about an hour-and-a-half after landing.

"Well, the crew of STS-128 and the space shuttle Discovery, we're very happy to be back on land here in California," Sturckow said on the runway. "We wish we could have gone to Florida today, gotten to see our families down there, but it just didn't work out with the weather."

Discovery's seventh crewmember, returning space station flight engineer Timothy Kopra, made the trip to Earth strapped into a recumbent seat on the shuttle's lower deck to ease his transition back to gravity after 58 days in space.

Asked if he planned to walk off the shuttle under his own power, Kopra told CBS News earlier this week "there are some scientific experiments that require me to come off horizontally, so I won't even have the opportunity to test it out."

Discovery rolls down runway 22. (Photo: NASA TV)

Like all space station crew members, Kopra exercised daily and "we have the chance to do the absolute best we can to stay in good shape. I think there may be some effects, but hopefully I'll recover quickly."

Reflecting on his stay in orbit during a news conference last week, Kopra said "this experience has completely exceeded anything that I thought it would be like, just the sights, the sounds, the experiences with a great crew and really being part of two shuttle missions. It's been absolutely phenomenal.

"The main thing, obviously, I'm looking forward to is seeing my family again, my wife and two kids. And maybe have a sip of a beer once I get home."

Kopra and his shuttle crewmates plan to fly back to Houston on Saturday for reunions with friends and family members and debriefings with mission managers and engineers.

Discovery delivered some nine tons of supplies and equipment to the International Space Station along with Kopra's replacement, astronaut Nicole Stott.

Over the course of a week of docked operations, the astronauts transferred two science racks, an experiment sample freezer, a new treadmill, an astronaut sleep station, a carbon dioxide removal assembly and other supplies and equipment to the space station.

"Wheels stopped." (Photo: NASA TV)

In addition, the shuttle crew carried out three spacewalks to replace a massive ammonia coolant tank, retrieve two external experiments, deploy a spare parts mounting mechanism and string power and data cables needed for a new module that will be attached next year.

Discovery undocked from the station Tuesday to prepare for landing. The astronauts intended to land Thursday at the Kennedy Space Center, but stormy weather blocked both available landing opportunities and entry Flight Director Richard Jones told them to stay in orbit an extra day.

More of the same developed today and after waving off the first Florida opportunity, Jones threw in the towel and diverted Sturckow and company to Edwards. It will take a week to 10 days to prepare the shuttle for a ferry flight back to Florida.

"Discovery was a really great vehicle on this mission, it performed flawlessly," Sturckow said after landing. "It was a great mission, we're looking forward to getting back to Houston for the debriefs. We just want to thank everybody for their support."

Next up for NASA is launch of the shuttle Atlantis around Nov. 9 on a mission to mount critical spare parts on the station as a hedge against future failures after the shuttle fleet is retired next year.

Aboard the space station, meanwhile, the Expedition 20 crew is moving into a particularly busy phase of flight. A new Japanese cargo ship, launched from Japan on Thursday, is scheduled to arrive next week. At the end of the month, a Russian Soyuz spacecraft is scheduled for launch to carry two new crew members - Jeffrey Williams and Maxim Suraev - to the station.

Williams and Suraev will be joined for launch by Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberte, a billionaire space tourist who is believed to have paid around $35 million for a ride to the station.

Laliberte will return to Earth Oct. 11 with outgoing space station commander Gennady Padalka and flight engineer Michael Barratt.

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