NASA took Endeavour and four astronauts off standby for a rescue mission today, a move that put the shuttle back on course for a June 13 launch on an International Space Station assembly mission.
NASA halted a three-day rescue mission countdown that started Wednesday. Countdown clocks had reached a built-in hold at T-Minus 27 hours.
Shuttle program officials released the launch team in Firing Room 4 at the Launch Control Center and directed shuttle fleet operator United Space Alliance to start preparing Endeavour for a move from launch pad 39B to launch pad 39A.
Endeavour and seven astronauts are scheduled to blast off from pad 39A around 7:15 a.m. June 13. The crew plans to deliver the third and final section of the Japanese Kibo science research facility to the station.
Now scheduled for May 30, the move to pad 39A will clear the way for NASA to proceed with modifications required at pad 39B for the Ares I-X test flight, which now is scheduled to blast off around Aug. 30.
LeRoy Cain, deputy shuttle program manager and chairman of NASA's Mission Management Team, said Endeavour no longer would be able to be launched in time to execute a rescue mission because the shuttle would be unable to reach Atlantis before all its power-production capability had been sapped.
Atlantis would run out of electrical power next Monday, and it would take two or three days to rendezvous with Atlantis before a rescue could be carried out.
"We're about at that point relative to what we would be able to do in terms of being able to execute a rescue in any case," Cain said.
NASA shuttle program managers will hold a flight readiness review for Endeavour's mission to the station -- designated STS-127 -- next Wednesday, and preflight media briefings will be held the following day.
The STS-127 crew will fly to KSC on May 31 for a two-day practice countdown that will pick up June 1. Led by veteran mission commander Mark "Roman" Polansky, the crew includes pilot Douglas Hurley and five mission specialists: Christopher Cassidy, Thomas Marshburn, David Wolf and Julie Payette of the Canadian Space Agency.
NASA astronaut Timothy Kopra will fly up to the station on Endeavour, and Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata will return to Earth with the STS-127 crew.
STS-127 will be the first station assembly flight to feature five spacewalks.
An executive-level flight readiness review will be held June 3.
5 comments:
Was this the first time the clock was counting down to a launch while a shuttle was still in orbit? Is the clock now counting back up from the time of the Atlantis launch?
Thanks.
Mark:
I'm pretty darn sure it was a first. And yes, the clock now is back on Mission Elapsed Time, so it's counting up from the time of the Atlantis launch.....
The first time and hopefuly the last!
I think the shortest time between a countdown and an ongoing mission before this was STS-55 which launched 4/26/93 after STS-56 which landed 4/17/93
"Atlantis would run out of electrical power next Monday, and it would take two or three days to rendezvous with Atlantis before a rescue could be carried out."
The rescue Shuttle was always meant to launch on Saturday, wasn't it? This seems to say that a rescue mission could never have worked. Although even if Atlantis had run out of power, I would have thought that the crew could survive for a few days. Remember Apollo 13?
I don't for a moment think that a rescue mission will be needed but what if it was? Imagine the public reaction if no rescue was attempted. Stopping the countdown before Atlantis's deorbit burn seems odd to me.
Conor:
NASA always has recognized that if they found damage in the late inspection, pulling off a rescue mission would be difficult because the astronauts would have used up most of their power-generation capability.
The rescue mission, however, would have been perfectly doable in the event debris on ascent damaged the orbiter's heat shield. NASA would have seen the damage during the Flight Day 2 inspection (or a Flight Day 5 focused inspection) and Endeavour would have been ready for launch May 18 -- seven days after the Atlantis launch. The astronauts would have immediately powered down all but essential systems to conserve power production capabilities and Atlantis would have had an on-orbit stay time of 20 to 25 days.
So the whole STS-400 rescue mission scenario really was designed to rescue a crew that sustained Columbia-like damage on launch. It always was recognized by NASA that if damage was detected late in the mission, Atlantis would have exhausted most of the liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen that are combined in shuttle fuel cells to generate electricity, and that the chances of pulling off a rescue flight decreased with every day on orbit.
NASA started up the STS-400 countdown Wednesday because it gave them protection against the possiblity of damage detected in the late inspection, or if critical landing systems failed checkout earlier today.
So they know the condition of the spaceship now, and only an a serious orbital debris hit between now and atmospheric reentry could change that.
Hope this helps clear things up.
Todd
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