Space Exploration
Shuttle Discovery Launches on Mission to International Space Station
Discovery streaked across the sky above Daytona Beach, Fla., on a mission to rewire the International Space Station.
The shuttle Discovery lifted off in the first nighttime launch in four years.
With a blinding streak of yellow flame that left a mark on the retina and a lump in the throat, the shuttle and its crew of seven astronauts lifted off in the program’s first nightime launching in more than four years.
It was the second launching attempt for the Discovery. Weather concerns forced mission managers to scrub on Thursday, and the space agency decided to forgo an attempt on Friday, when the weather predictions were even worse.
The rules include restrictions on wind speed, cloud cover and other factors, both at the Kennedy Space Center here and at emergency landing sites in Spain and France; the concerns early Saturday were largely focused on high crosswinds at the Kennedy landing strip.
But the winds died and the weather continued to improve as the evening progressed, and the mission management team ultimately gave approval for launching.
Just before beginning the final countdown, the shuttle launch director, Michael D. Leinbach, polled his team and then called over to the Discovery’s commander, Mark L. Polansky, using his nickname.
“O.K., Roman, 48 hours makes a tremendous difference,” he said. “The weather is outstanding, the vehicle is in great shape, so we wish you all good luck, Godspeed, and we’ll see you back here in 12 days.”
Commander Polansky thanked Mr. Leinbach and his colleagues.
“You’re all going to be with us tonight going to orbit. We look forward to lighting up the night sky and rewiring I.S.S.,” he said, using the space station’s abbreviation.
Since the loss of the shuttle Columbia in 2003, liftoffs have taken place during the day so NASA analysts can look for the kind of liftoff debris that doomed that shuttle and its crew. The nightime launching made it harder to make out any possible debris in the images from the camera on the shuttle’s external fuel tank, but those images and data from radar and other sensors will be scrutinized for any signs of damage to the craft.
The 12-day mission promises to be one of the most complex in the history of the shuttle program, and requires the astronauts to install a stubby extension to the station’s structure and to reconfigure its electrical system to receive power from new solar arrays. The mission also includes a tricky attempt to coax a solar array that has been standing atop the station for six years to fold itself into a more compact form, out of the way so that the new array can rotate to continuously face the sun.
The work will prepare the station to generate the power it will need for the next rounds of construction and expansion, and to meet the needs of a crew that will eventually double from three to six. Spacewalkers will unplug and reattach 112 power connectors in the process.
The rewiring is risky. Half of the space station’s electrical system will be powered down as its wiring is reconfigured, and then brought up again. Then, in another spacewalk, the astronauts will shut down the other half of the station’s electrical system. Critical systems will remain online, since they can receive power from either power network. But some lights, communications systems and other components will be turned off during each of the two rewiring spacewalks, and mission managers have fret about what might happen if those balk at coming back online.
Then, after the power procedure is complete, the astronauts also have to start up cooling pumps that will control the temperature of the circuit control boxes. The pumps have not been used in four years, and that, too, has managers sweating, said Kirk Shireman, the deputy space station program manager, in a briefing last month with reporters.
He compared it to “putting a car in the garage” and not touching aside from keeping the battery charged.
“You come back in four years,” he said. “You turn the key and you hope it starts.”
The changes to the station on this mission will be profound, but will not be obvious to the untrained eye, said Michael T. Suffredini, the manager of the space station program. “When you look at the space station when the shuttle leaves, it’s not going to look hardly any different from when they got there,” he said. “But it will be a dramatically different vehicle inside.”
Just two members of the Discovery’s crew — Commander Polansky, a former Air Force test pilot, and Capt. Robert L. Curbeam Jr. of the Navy — have made the jump to space before. The rest of the crew will be taking their first trip, including the pilot, Cmdr. William A. Oefelein of the Navy; Cmdr. Sunita L. Williams of the Navy; Nicholas J..M. Patrick; Joan E. Higginbotham; and Christer Fuglesang, the first Swedish astronaut and a representative of the European Space Agency.
Commander Williams will remain on the space station for a six-month stay, and Thomas Reiter of the European Space Agency, who has been living on the station, will climb aboard the shuttle for his ride back to earth.
Though the work promises to be mind-numbingly complex, Captain Curbeam, as the lead spacewalker, said in a recent interview that the rookies he will work with had years of training for the mission. He also noted that he has done construction on the station before, including work on power and data lines and riding the station’s robot arm.
“I performed just about every kind of task you can on a spacewalk, so that gives me a lot of comfort,” he said.
In an interview on Thursday, Michael D. Griffin, the administrator of NASA, characterized the choreography to put everything in place and start up the various systems in the time allotted for the mission. “Stunning,” he said. “Stunning.
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posted by Joe Paris @ Sunday, December 10, 2006
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