Next space shuttle mission to have backup, NASA says

0 Comments | Deseret News (Salt Lake City), Feb 20, 2004 | by Warren E. Leary New York Times News Service

WASHINGTON -- The next space shuttle mission, crammed with scores of modifications and new procedures for resumption of flight, will have a backup, NASA officials said Thursday.

When the space agency launches its first shuttle since the Columbia disaster, the officials said, it will have a second shuttle on standby in case the craft is damaged and a rescue mission is needed.

Michael Kostelnick, deputy associate administrator for the shuttle and space station programs at NASA, said the first mission to resume flights will be so full of changes that extra precautions are needed in case something goes wrong. If the first shuttle gets into trouble, its crew could take refuge in the International Space Station until help arrived, he said.

"For the first flight, we're going to have the capability to do this," Kostelnick said at a Johnson Space Center news conference in Houston. "The second vehicle would be able to launch and go to the International Space Station and pick up the first crew if we had a problem."

NASA officials have indicated recently that the next shuttle flight, tentatively scheduled for September or October, probably would be moved to early 2005 because more time is needed for modifications.

NASA has yet to decide which of two available orbiters, Atlantis or Discovery, will be the first to fly and which will be prepared as a rescue vehicle. The third remaining shuttle, Endeavour, is undergoing scheduled major modifications.

Kostelnick said the agency did not know how long it would continue the practice of having a rescue shuttle ready during missions.

"Our experience for subsequent flights will be determined by our success and our problems with the first flight," he said.

NASA has not planned a contingency rescue mission since the 1970s, when the space agency modified an Apollo capsule to seat five astronauts instead of three in case a crew aboard its first space station, Skylab, could not return in its own capsule.

William Parsons, the shuttle program manager, said the second shuttle would not have to be sitting on a launching pad. The craft would simply have to be ready to fly within 45 to 90 days, he said, the currently estimated time the space station could support seven extra astronauts with oxygen, food and other supplies.

Parsons said the rescue duties would be added to the training of the next scheduled astronaut crew.

"I don't believe that there's an awful lot of extra training or extra things that we have to do for a rescue mission," Parsons said. 'It's not a huge amount of work. It's more about planning. It's more about contingency."

Under the space initiative recently announced by President Bush, the shuttles are to keep flying until they complete building the space station in 2010, and then be retired. All remaining flights, up to 35, are to be to the station, where shuttles will be inspected for damage and, if necessary, docked for repairs.

The timing of the first shuttle flight will depend upon completion and testing of hardware modifications suggested by the review board that examined the loss of Columbia and its crew a year ago, Parsons said.

Among the tasks holding up the mission are study of the shuttle's giant fuel tank and testing modifications that keep it from shedding insulating foam, a piece of which damaged Columbia's wing on liftoff and doomed the craft. Other sources of delay, he said, are tests on a sensor boom that a crew could use to inspect a shuttle in orbit, and deciding on a method that could be used for in-orbit repairs of the composite carbon heat-shield material along the leading edge of the wing.