All systems go for Discovery

[southsider2k5]

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=2155882

 

[RibbieRubarb]

"And I for one welcome our new insect overlords!"

[Goldmember]

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=2155882

 

 

 

hope the rest of their flight goes on without a hitch...

[Balta1701]

So, for those of us using Soxtalk to get around a news censorship wall, were there any problems at liftoff? Any reports of more foam flying off during the launch, like last time?

[southsider2k5]

So, for those of us using Soxtalk to get around a news censorship wall, were there any problems at liftoff? Any reports of more foam flying off during the launch, like last time?

 

Only very small pieces, and well after the vital 2 minutes and 15 second immediately following liftoff. Once the orbiter achieved orbit the crew saw something floating away they thought initially was a large chunk of foam, which turned out to be ice.

[southsider2k5]

Space shuttle Discovery has docked with the international space station.

 

Earlier, Discovery did a back flip so the international space station's crew could photograph its belly for any signs of damage.

 

 

 

It was only the second time a space shuttle has performed the unusual maneuver before docking with the orbiting complex.

 

Steve Lindsey, Discovery's commander, manually steered the shuttle's nose up and slowly flipped the spacecraft over when Discovery was 600 feet under the space station. The 360-feet-degree flip started about an hour before the shuttle docked with the space station, traveling at a speed of 17,500 miles per hour, about 210 miles over Spain.

 

Space station crew members Pavel Vinogradov and Jeff Williams planned to transmit the digital images back to Houston where mission managers and engineers would study them. An inspection Wednesday by Discovery's crew using cameras attached to a 50-foot boom revealed no major damage from the launch.

 

"Great to see you out the window," Williams radioed to Discovery after the shuttle fired maneuvering jets and made its final approach to the space station several miles away.

 

Lindsey responded: "Good to see you, Jeff. We're proceeding along normally. You guys look great."

 

The pitch maneuver was performed for the first time during Discovery's flight last year, the only other shuttle mission since the 2003 Columbia disaster.

 

Columbia had been damaged by a chunk of hard insulating foam that fell from its external fuel tank during lift off. All seven astronauts died when fiery gases entered a breach in the wing during re-entry.

 

Flyaway foam remained a concern during Tuesday's Discovery launch. Photos showed two areas of small foam loss around the ice frost ramps on Discovery's external fuel tank, but NASA managers said the foam loss was too small and occurred too late in the launch to be a danger to the shuttle.

 

The Discovery crew awoke Thursday to a recording of Elton John's "Daniel," a choice of the wife and two sons of European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Reiter, who was set to become a member of the space station's crew after the shuttle docked.

 

Reiter, who has a son named Daniel, will spend six months living on the space station, bringing the size of the crew to three people for the first time in three years.

 

"You will be losing a crew member at the end of the day, but then again, you're gaining a station," flight controllers in Houston wrote Discovery's crew in their daily morning electronic message.

 

The crew size was reduced in the years after the Columbia accident when NASA's shuttle fleet was grounded. Russian vehicles weren't large enough to keep the space station supplied for more than two people.

 

Wednesday's inspection by the astronauts uncovered a thermal tile filler poking about a half-inch out of the belly of Discovery. Deputy shuttle program manager John Shannon said better data should be available Thursday but for now, engineers do not believe the dangling fabric will pose a danger for re-entry or require repairs. Last summer two similar strips had to be removed in orbit.

 

Last month, NASA's safety director and chief engineer recommended against launch until the area around those ramps was fixed. A repair plan is still being designed.

 

The mission for Discovery's crew is to test shuttle-inspection techniques and deliver supplies to the international space station. Astronauts Piers Sellers and Michael Fossum plan to carry out two spacewalks, and possibly a third, which would extend the 12-day mission by a day.

[Steff]

So the bird crap is a non issue..?

[Goldmember]

Discovery crew earns an extra day in space; engineers examine heat shield

Updated 7/7/2006 5:08 PM ET

 

 

CAPE CANAVERAL (AP) — NASA engineers examined new detailed pictures of space shuttle Discovery's heat shield Friday, a day before two astronauts were to embark on the most disorienting task of their 13-day mission: a wobbly spacewalk.

 

Astronauts Piers Sellers and Michael Fossum will make a six-and-a-half-hour spacewalk Saturday that is the cosmic equivalent of trying to paint a house while standing on a rickety ladder. They will stand at the end of the shuttle's 100-foot robotic arm and extended boom to test a technique for repairing the spacecraft's heat shield.

 

"You're standing at the end of it at night, so you'll feel like you're standing on a diving board or standing at the top of a telephone pole or hanging down from a ceiling," Sellers said in a June interview. "It's disorienting, there's no question."

 

And if that's not enough, mission control told Sellers and Fossum that they may also have to play "hot potato" with a potentially scorching replacement part for a broken transporter on the international space station. The railcar-like device must be fixed to help with future construction of the orbital outpost. If the part gets too hot "let it hang from a tether or 'hot potato' it between your hands," mission control said.

 

Also Friday, NASA managers announced that Discovery has enough fuel to stay up for a 13th day to squeeze in a third spacewalk for Sellers and Fossum on July 12.

 

In that bonus spacewalk, Sellers and Fossum will practice shuttle thermal repairs and perhaps conduct a real fix by yanking out spare gap filler between heat-shield tiles just below the shuttle's nose. Gap filler is material fitted between tiles to prevent them from rubbing against each other. Two pieces of gap filler had to be removed from Discovery's belly during a spacewalk last year because of concerns they would cause problems during re-entry.

 

Early photos showed that the gap filler may be sticking out 0.4 of an inch, and anything more than 0.25 of an inch is unacceptable, lead flight director Tony Ceccacci said Friday. However, the early photos could be off by as much as one-third of an inch, he said.

 

The gap filler was one of two potential heat shield problems that arose Friday. Astronauts spent several hours focusing the cameras on six specific "areas of interest" on the shuttle that had been seen in earlier photographs. Engineers need more information about the heat shield to ensure there is no damage like the kind that doomed Columbia's flight in 2003.

 

Besides the gap filler, NASA is concerned about a white spot on the shuttle's nose cap that engineers have described to the crew as resembling bird droppings — but not the same as white splotches found earlier on the wing. The concern is that the spot could be a hole in the thermal-protection system and need repair, Ceccacci said.

 

By Friday afternoon, it was too early to tell if these were serious problems, but NASA managers were optimistic. Spacecraft communicator Lee Archambault told Discovery's crew that early assessments of the photographs were promising.

 

The crew spent much of Friday hauling thousands of pounds of supplies into the station. Unloading items 220 miles above Earth was a challenge because of the lack of gravity, according to Discovery commander Steve Lindsey.

 

"You've got to go very, very slow because if you go fast, you kind of run into things and bump into other equipment," Lindsey said in interviews with reporters on the ground. "It's kind of an interesting choreography we have to go through."