A persistent problem with critical external tank fuel sensors appears to be past history, and NASA now is on its first post-Columbia shuttle roll, the commander of the agency's next mission said Sunday.
Just four days after sistership Atlantis and an International Space Station construction crew landed here at Kennedy Space Center, NASA is poised to punch out another outpost assembly mission on March 11 -- two weeks from this coming Tuesday.
The 20-day launch-to-launch turnaround would be is the fastest NASA has pulled off since the shuttle fleet returned to service in July 2005. At long last, the operational pace is much more like the flurries of flights that were typical in the 1990s.
"I think Endeavour's in great shape, and when you've got a team that's motivated and up to speed, boy, you want to keep them in the game, and I think that's what we're doing here with a couple of successive launches," Endeavour mission commander Dom Gorie told reporters gathered at launch pad 39A.
"We are really confident in the condition of the tank and the condition of Endeavour. Right now we're not hearing of any critical issues that we're tracking, which is a bit unusual."
Recurring problems with Engine Cut-Off, or ECO, sensors in the shuttle's external tank triggered two Atlantis launch scrubs last December, pushing back that shuttle's mission as well as the Endeavour flight. But engineers traced the problem to faulty sensor system connectors and appear to have fixed the problem. The sensors performed as expected during the Atlantis launch countdown on Feb. 7.
"The ECO sensors, from the performance we saw on the last launch, sure seems like it's fixed, and we're hopeful that it is. But if it's not, we've got a great plan to look at it and scrub if we need to," Gorie said. "But I don't see that being a problem."
Gorie and his crew are slated to haul the first part of the Japanese Kibo science research facility to the station along with a two-armed Canadian robot that will be stationed outside the outpost.
Veteran Japanese astronaut Takeo Doi is an Endeavour mission specialist, and a gaggle of Japanese journalists flocked to NASA's coastal Florida spaceport to see the crew during a practice countdown for their launch.
The crew also includes pilot Gregory H. Johnson and mission specialists Garrett Reisman, Robert Behnken, Michael Foreman and Richard Linnehan.
The full-up dress rehearsal started at 7:30 a.m. Sunday with a call-to-stations in the NASA Launch Control Center, and the astronauts will board Endeavour at pad 39A today for the last few hours of the training exercise.
The astronauts arrived at KSC on Saturday and took driving lessons. They learned to operate an M113 armored personnel carrier that would be used to escape the pad 39A area in the event of a fire or explosion.
The crew graduated from the University of M113 Drivers and Doi carried out a NASA Astronaut Office tradition. He placed a STS-123 crew emblem sticker on the rear bumber of the tank-like vehicle.
Other crews have been a little more creative:
Gorie and his crew spent about 20 minutes this morning fielding questions from reporters during an informal Q&A -- a standard media event held during a shuttle crew's Terminal Countdown Demonstration Test.
You can listen to an audio recording of the Q&A by clicking the following link. (Note: The file will take a minute or so to download before launching): STS123TCDT.
NOTE ON IMAGES: Click to enlarge and save any of the FLORIDA TODAY images captured out at launch pad 39A today. The traditional media event took place next to a concrete bunker the astronauts could scramble to in the event of an emergency at the launch pad. Photo credit: Todd Halvorson/FLORIDA TODAY.
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