Plans Made for Atlantis Shuttle
In November, top NASA officials were expected to set a firm December launch date for the shuttle Atlantis and a European laboratory bound for the International Space Station (ISS). A day-long review was being held by shuttle mission managers to decide whether Atlantis was ready for a planned December 6 launch to the ISS. NASA spokesperson, Kyle Herring, told space.com, “From a shuttle viewpoint, I think everything is looking very good.”
Stephen Frick, veteran shuttle commander of the Atlantis’ STS-122 astronaut crew, is charged with delivering the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Columbus laboratory to the ISS. They will swap one member of the three-person Expedition 16 crew who is currently serving aboard the station. ESA astronaut, Leopold Eyharts, of France, will replace U.S. space flyer, Dan Tani, as part of the Expedition 16 crew. At least three spacewalkers will be staged by Frick and his six crewmates in order to install Columbus at the station’s Harmony connecting node during their 11-day spaceflight. A full month of ISS construction by Expedition 16 commander, Peggy Whitson, Tani and flight engineer, Yuri Malenchenko preceded the mission.
The three astronauts staged three spacewalks in 15 days with tricky robotic arm work to outfit the Harmony node with a shuttle docking port. They moved it to the front of the ISS and wired it into the station’s cooling and power grid. The impact of metallic grit in a massive gear that rotates the station’s starboard solar arrays like a paddle wheel to track the sun and continues to be studied by the engineers on earth. They also continue to work to decide if indications of a slight air leak abroad the Station’s Harmony module are genuine or a result of false signals from ISS instrumentation.
A standard meeting, called Flight Readiness Review (FRR), precedes every shuttle mission. During this time, NASA officials will discuss plans that call for STS-122 space walkers to wear protective over-gloves during their excursions to avoid cutting their spacesuit gloves on sharp edges outside the ISS according to Herring. He added that talks will be ongoing by Mission managers over potential exterior coating defects on heat-resistant panels lining space shuttle wing edges and nose caps. Atlantis’ heat shield, which consists of RRC panels, heat-resistant tiles and thermal blankets were cleared of any concerns by mission managers earlier in the month for the planned launch.
Atlantis’ STS-122 mission will mark NASA’s fourth shuttle flight of 1007 and the second to deliver a new orbital room to the ISS.
This entry was posted on Monday, December 3rd, 2007 at 2:43 am and is filed under Public Relations, Space Agency News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
