Back to newsletter listDate:
Thu, March 27, 2008 12:18:02 AMFrom:
CBS Space News
Subject:
1205a 3/27 Update: Next shuttle flight faces minor delay; post-landing news conference
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CBS NEWS STS-123 STATUS REPORT: 74
Posted: 12:05 AM, 3/27/08
By William Harwood
CBS News Space Analyst
Changes and additions:
SR-71 (03/26/08): Landing delayed one orbit by low clouds
SR-72 (03/26/08): Weather improves; shuttle braking rockets fired
SR-73 (30/26/08): Shuttle Endeavour glides to nighttime landing
SR-74 (03/26/08): Next shuttle launch faces minor delay; mission status briefing
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8:55 PM, 3/26/08, Update: Shuttle Endeavour glides to smooth night landing (UPDATED at 12:05 a.m., 03/27/08, with post-landing news conference)
Running one orbit late because of troublesome low clouds, the shuttle Endeavour plunged back to Earth Wednesday, dropping out of the night for a picture-perfect landing at the Kennedy Space Center to close out a marathon 16-day space station assembly mission. Joining the shuttle astronauts for the trip back to Earth was European Space Agency astronaut Leopold Eyharts, launched to the station in February and returning after 48 days in space.
"I can't imagine the mission could have gone any better," said NASA Administrator Mike Griffin. "They made it look easy."
Reflecting on the addition of the first of two Japanese modules and the assembly of a Canadian maintenance robot during Endeavour's five-spacewalk mission, Griffin said "if you look around, there really isn't, any more, a U.S. human spaceflight program or a Russian human spaceflight program. There is a world human spaceflight program, centered around the building and then later utilization of the international space station. And we hope when we get that under our belt, this partnership will return to the moon and later go on to Mars."
Flying upside down and backward over the Indian Ocean, commander Dominic Gorie and pilot Gregory Johnson fired Endeavour's twin braking rockets for two minutes and 48 seconds starting at 7:33:14 p.m., slowing the ship by about 206 mph and dropping the far side of the shuttle's orbit deep into the atmosphere.
After a half-hour free fall, Endeavour plunged back into the discernible atmosphere at 8:07 p.m. at an altitude of 76 miles above the south Pacific Ocean. Minutes later, the shuttle's heat shield was subjected to 3,000-degree temperatures as the spacep*** decelerated from its orbital velocity of 5 miles per second.
Crossing high above Central America's Yucatan Peninsula, Endeavour's flight computers guided the shuttle across the Gulf of Mexico and then over the west coast of Florida just south of Tampa, dropping through 84,000 feet at 1,700 mph seven minutes before touchdown.
Three minutes later, at an altitude of about 50,700 feet, Endeavour's speed dropped below Mach 1 and a double sonic boom rumbled across the space center. Gorie took over manual control a few seconds later and after letting Gregory get a few moments of "stick time, guided the shuttle through a sweeping 255-degree left overhead turn to line up on runway 15.
As Gorie pulled the shuttle's nose up just before touchdown, Johnson lowered Endeavour's landing gear and the orbiter settled to a tire-smoking touchdown at 8:39:08 p.m. as jets of flame from the exhaust ports of the ship's three hydraulic power units flared in the night.
"Houston, Endeavour. Wheels stopped," Gorie radioed as the shuttle rolled to a stop.
"Welcome home, Endeavour," astronaut James Dutton called from mission control. "Congrats to the entire crew, to JAXA and CSA (the Japanese and Canadian space agencies), on a very successful mission."
"Thanks, Jim," Gorie replied. "It was a super rewarding mission, exciting from the start to the ending and we just thank you for all your help. Looking forward to seeing you guys soon."
It was the 16th night landing at KSC and the 22nd in shuttle history. Mission duration was 15 days 18 hours 10 minutes and 54 seconds, covering 6.6 million miles and 249 complete orbits since blastoff March 11 from nearby launch complex 39A.
Observers were startled by the hydraulic power units' exhaust jetting from vents on either side of Endeavour's vertical tail fin. The exhaust is produced by the orbiter's three auxiliary power units, which provide the muscle needed to move the ship's wing flaps, speed brake, landing gear brakes and nose wheel steering. The exhaust appeared normal in infrared views, but was more pronounced than usual in NASA's visible-light camera. NASA spokesman Kyle Herring in mission control said the APUs were operating normally.
Gorie, Johnson and their shuttle crewmates - flight engineer Michael Foreman, Richard Linnehan, Robert Behnken and Japanese astronaut Takao Doi - doffed their pressure suits and joined technicians and NASA managers on the runway about an hour after landing for a traditional walk-around inspection.
Eyharts made the flight back to Earth resting on his back in a special recumbent seat on Endeavour's lower deck. As with all returning long-duration space station astronauts, a team of flight surgeons was standing by to monitor Eyharts as he began the long process of readjusting to Earth's gravity. The French air force general was replaced aboard the station by NASA astronaut Garrett Reisman, who hitched a ride the lab complex aboard Endeavour.
Eyharts and his shuttle crewmates are expected to fly back to the Johnson Space Center in Houston on Thursday.
Endeavour's 16-day mission was the longest yet for a space station assembly flight and the five spacewalks carried out by Linnehan, Behnken, Foreman and Reisman set another one-flight station assembly record of 33 hours and 28 minutes.
Endeavour took off March 11 and docked with the space station two days later. The day after that, Doi, operating the shuttle's robot arm, moved a Japanese storage module into position for attachment to the station while Linnehan and Reisman staged the mission's initial spacewalk.
During the next spacewalk, Linnehan and Behnken then began assembly of the Canadian Space Agency's special purpose dexterous manipulator, a maintenance robot known as Dextre. Attached to the end of the station's robot arm, Dextre can be used to replace components on the station that might otherwise require a spacewalk.
Along with mounting the Japanese module and building Dextre, the astronauts also transferred critical spare parts to the station and mounted Endeavour's heat shield inspection boom on the lab for use by the next shuttle crew. That shuttle, Discovery, is carrying Japan's huge Kibo lab module and does not have enough room for the inspection boom as well.
Liftoff had been scheduled for May 25 - minutes before NASA's Phoenix lander is scheduled to touch down on Mars - but Griffin confirmed Wednesday that launch will slip a few days because of late delivery of the shuttle's external fuel tank.
"You can go watch the Phoenix landing (at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.)," Griffin told a reporter. "We're working on the exact date for STS-124." He said launch would take place within a few days of May 25, "but we know you'll be deconflicted enough that you can manage with a round-trip ticket. Because I'll tell you this, the landing day on Mars is fixed! It ain't moving."
NASA is still assessing its schedule for subsequent shuttle flights. Eleven more flights are planned before the shuttle fleet is retired in 2010, with four flights on tap this year, four in 2009 and three in 2010.
Along with Discovery's upcoming station flight, the shuttle Atlantis is scheduled for launch Aug. 28 on a final mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope. Endeavour returns to orbit in October for a space station resupply mission and Discovery closes out the year in December with a flight to deliver a final set of solar arrays to the international lab.
But external tank production problems at Lockheed Martin's Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans threaten delays for downstream flights. The tank needed by Discovery for the next mission reached the Kennedy Space Center behind schedule Wednesday and while that flight remains roughly on track, the Hubble mission could slip into October when all is said and done, triggering domino-like slips for subsequent flights.
NASA managers have not yet made any official changes. But Bill Gerstenmaier, chief of space operations for NASA, said Wednesday production of new tanks based on post-Columbia design modifications involves numerous changes and based on actual experience, it appears delays are likely.
"The tanks we're getting now, you can think of them as clean-build tanks, whereas before, the tanks we had were built before the Katrina hurricane and we were repairing and making modifications to those tanks," Gerstenmaier said. "So we're gaining some experience and seeing how long it takes to put those tanks together, how to fabricate them.
"And then HST is a little unique because we need to have two tanks down here ready to go support that mission, the tank for the flight itself and the tank for the contingency (rescue) flight. So we're off evaluating now what that production schedule looks like. We really don't have a good handle on that schedule yet. Once we understand a little bit better where that fits, we'll then announce where those flights are going, if they're going to move.
"But right now, it's a little early to look at that," Gerstenmaier said. "But we understand the work is a little bit different than we had before and we're going to have to have a different production schedule. So things will slip, probably, a little bit for those tanks."
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Quick-Launch Web Links:
CBS News STS-123 Status Reports:
http://www.cbsnews.com/network/news/space/current.html
CBS News STS-123 Quick-Look Page:
http://www.cbsnews.com/network/news/space/currentglance.html
NASA Shuttle Web: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/shuttle/index.html
NASA Station Web: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/station/index.html
Spaceflight Now: http://spaceflightnow.com/index.html
GoogleSatTrack: http://www.lizard-tail.com/isana/tracking/
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