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Topic: Welcome Home Discovery (Read 155 times)

lakelady
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Welcome Home Discovery
« on: Aug 9^th, 2005, 8:35am »

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'Discovery is home'
Shuttle completes first mission since loss of Columbia
By Thom Patterson
CNN

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Florida (CNN) -- The space shuttle Discovery touched down Tuesday morning, completing NASA's first shuttle mission since Columbia broke apart during re-entry in February 2003.

The shuttled landed at 5:11 a.m. PT at NASA's secondary landing site at Edwards Air Force Base in California.

As commander Eileen Collins brought the orbiter to a stop on runway 22, NASA spokesman James Hartsfield stated, "Discovery is home."

"Congratulations on a truly spectacular test flight," mission control radioed the crew. "Welcome home friends."

"We're happy to be back, and we congratulate the whole team for a job well done," Collins said.

It was the 50th shuttle landing at Edwards.

Earlier Tuesday NASA waved off its two opportunities for Discovery to land at its primary site at Kennedy Space Center because of stormy weather off the Florida coast.

Weather conditions at Edwards included clear skies and light winds, "excellent conditions for a space shuttle landing," NASA said.

"How do you feel about a beautiful clear night with a breeze down the runway in the high desert of California?" mission control radioed Collins.

"We are ready for whatever we need to do," Collins said.

Discovery's path to Edwards began with the spacecraft firing its engines over the Indian Ocean to slow it enough to re-enter Earth's atmosphere over the Pacific.

Shuttle pilot James Kelly steered Discovery on a trajectory leading it near Los Angeles and Oxnard, California, before touch down.

NASA officials vowed to land the orbiter Tuesday at one of three locations after weather conditions forced them to scrub the shuttle's scheduled return a day earlier. The Kennedy Space Center in Florida was NASA's first choice. Edwards their second and White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico their third.

Officials would have preferred to land at Kennedy Space Center to avoid the cost and inconvenience of flying the shuttle back to its launch site from the alternative landing strips.

Mission STS-114 largely was designed to improve safety on future shuttle journeys, although the program has been suspended while NASA investigates its failure to solve the problem of foam falling from the shuttle's external liquid fuel tank during launch.

Video from the July 26 launch showed debris falling from the fuel tank, but NASA said it did not appear to have struck the orbiter.

Once in space, Discovery's crew used cameras to scrutinize the craft's exterior for possible damage that might pose a threat during re-entry.

The shuttle spent most of the mission docked to the international space station, delivering much-needed supplies and performing maintenance on the outpost.

Astronaut Steve Robinson performed an unprecedented shuttle repair mission by plucking two pieces of filler material protruding between tiles on Discovery's underside. NASA wanted them removed to ensure they wouldn't overheat, damaging Discovery's belly during re-entry.

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lakelady
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Re: Welcome Home Discovery
« Reply #1 on: Aug 9^th, 2005, 8:38am »

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Discovery lands safely after 14 days in space
MSNBC

'We're happy to be back,' commander Collins says

The most exhaustive test flight in the space shuttle fleet's 24-year history ended Tuesday with the shuttle Discovery's pre-dawn touchdown in California.

After 14 days and 5.8 million miles in space, Discovery landed safely at 8:11:22 a.m. ET at Edwards Air Force Base. "Discovery is home," the NASA TV commentator said.

"Congratulations on a truly spectacular test flight," astronaut Ken Ham at Mission Control radioed to the crew as the shuttle stopped on the runway. Welcome home, friends.

"We're happy to be back," replied commander Eileen Collins, who piloted the shuttle to its landing. "We congratulate the whole team on a job well done," she said.

The seven-person crew made a series of post-landing checks after landing. The last-minute switch from Kennedy Space Center to Edwards due to weather meant the astronauts would not be able to see their families in person until Wednesday, when they all planned to meet in Houston.

NASAs top officials also had gathered in Florida to welcome home the first shuttle flight since Columbia was destroyed during its re-entry two and a half years ago. "I'm thinking of resigning ... in favor of Eileen Collins," NASA Administrator Mike Griffin said at a post-landing news conference.

With Discovery safely back on the ground, the mission was hailed as a success even though a chunk of foam insulation broke off from the external fuel tank after launch, leading NASA to suspend future shuttle flights, and even though two protruding bits of filler material had to be plucked off Discovery's belly during a spacewalk. In both cases, the problems resulted in no harm to the shuttle or its crew.

I hope this shows people that were coming back, NASA spaceflight chief Bill Readdy said from Cape Canaveral following touchdown. Weve got some more work to do. We know what we need to do and well do it.

Discovery's crew had to cope with a series of delays, from launch to landing. A fuel gauge glitch caused the launch to be postponed 13 days until July 26. While in flight, the mission was extended a day to give the crew more time to transfer supplies to the space station. And the landing, originally set for Aug. 8, was delayed a day by poor weather in Florida. The poor weather persisted Tuesday, forcing NASA to divert Discovery to California.

Tuesday's landing was the 50th shuttle landing at Edwards since 1981, but Discovery took a different flight path than its predecessors. Discovery skirted Los Angeles because of new public safety considerations in the wake of the Columbia disaster, which rained debris onto Texas and Louisiana.

The first post-Columbia mission accomplished its two goals: to resupply the space station, and to test the inspection and repair techniques that NASA developed in the wake of Columbia's catastrophic breakup in 2003.

Discovery's flyaway foam was detected thanks to unprecedented in-flight imagery of the shuttle's ascent, and the dangling gap fillers were noted during the most detailed on-orbit inspections ever conducted. The inspections turned up still more flaws, including minor damage to shuttle tiles and a torn thermal blanket but NASA decided those posed no risk to Discovery's safe return.

Such problems might have gone unnoticed on past flights, because the inspection procedures were not nearly as rigorous. NASA officials said the problems were all part of the challenge of operating an experimental space vehicle which is how they have come to see the shuttles in the two and a half years since the Columbia disaster.

Investigators said Columbia and its crew were lost because a piece of flying foam bigger than the one that was seen coming off Discovery's tank struck the orbiter's left wing, opening up a gap that let hot gases in during Columbia's atmospheric re-entry 16 days later. They also faulted NASA's "broken safety culture" for not paying close enough attention to things that might go wrong.

As part of a $1.5 billion effort to remedy those faults, NASA added scores of cameras to record Discovery's launch, built a new kind of laser- and camera-equipped inspection boom to survey the shuttle's protective skin while on orbit and encouraged more open discussion of potential problems. Discovery's astronauts tested patches and fillers that could be used to mend gaps in the shuttle's tiles or reinforced panels, and NASA said those repair tools would be improved for future flights.

Public perceptions
Agency officials admitted that all the extra attention may have led the public to think this flight was unusually perilous. Before the landing, Griffin took issue with "people who think this has been a horribly troubled flight."

"This has been a great flight," he told reporters. "As I've said several times, I want to be honest, I want to be open: We made a mistake on the external fuel tank. We have a special team looking at that. We're going to try to find it and fix it. But almost everything we did with the external tank worked. Discovery is six times cleaner in flight than the average shuttle has been."

Griffin and other NASA managers said they would now turn their full attention to making the shuttles even safer. Even before Discovery was launched, an oversight panel said the space agency had to do more to address potential debris problems. At a minimum, the problems with foam-shedding and the tile gap fillers will have to be addressed before NASA launches Atlantis, the next shuttle in line.

Currently, Atlantis is due to fly another test mission to the space station no earlier than Sept. 22, but even during Discovery's flight, deputy shuttle manager Wayne Hale said he didn't consider that "a serious launch date." If Atlantis doesn't lift off by Sept. 24, the next opportunity would be in early November.

Extended mission
Because of that potential delay in the next launch, Discovery's flight was extended by a day, to provide more of an opportunity to transfer spare supplies including extra water and oxygen from the shuttle to the station. After emptying the shuttle's cargo module, the crew loaded it up with tons of trash and old equipment from the station.

In addition to testing the repair tools, Discovery spacewalkers Stephen Robinson and Soichi Noguchi repaired one of the station's gyroscopes and replaced another one, bringing the station's four-gyro guidance system to full strength for the first time in three years.

During the third and final spacewalk, the two astronauts installed a storage platform on the station for future construction jobs and then Robinson took an unprecedented ride on the station's robotic arm to Discovery's tile-covered belly, where he removed the protruding gap fillers by hand.

After the spacewalks, Discovery's seven astronauts and the space station's two crew members found time to pay tribute to Columbia's fallen explorers.

"They knew the risks, but they believed in what they were doing," first-time space flier Charles Camarda said. "They showed us that the fire of the human spirit is insatiable. They knew that in order for a great people to do great things, they must not be bridled by timidity."

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Pocket
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Re: Welcome Home Discovery
« Reply #2 on: Aug 9^th, 2005, 12:31pm »

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I'm happy that they got down safely. In our part of Texas, the Columbia tragedy has been on our minds.

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AoM
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Re: Welcome Home Discovery
« Reply #3 on: Aug 9^th, 2005, 1:10pm »

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I watched it this morning, got up at 4 yesterday and today to make sure I wouldn't miss it. What a beautiful sight! I hope they fix that foam problem and we can have more successful missions. I was in awe watching that shuttle come down through the night sky. Absolute awe

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Boradamer
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Re: Welcome Home Discovery
« Reply #4 on: Aug 10^th, 2005, 9:23am »

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I am so glad they made it down safely. I believe fully in our need to be in space and do the things that the shuttle allows us to do.

I do however think it is time for a new plan on how to get up there. The shuttle fleet is almost 20 years old. Think about the technology we had back in the 80's compared to today. We should be able to do something better and safer instead of trying to make an obsolete model work or patch it to make it work.

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