Saturday, July 30, 2005

Shuttle Discovery Status Update

Lots of little upates.
First, on flight day 3, prior to docking with ISS, the shuttle's underbelly was displayed to the ISS cameras and crew, which noted the two areas of "damage" to the tiles and the thermal blankets. Today, though, Wayne Hale (Deputy Manager of Shuttle Program) has said that the engineering review is complete and that they have formally cleared the shuttle to land with regards to these areas. They successfully docked with ISS.
Second, the reinforced carbon-carbon is believed to be fine (and is continuing evaluation), and it is expected that they will get the "all clear" on that tomorrow.
Third, there is some exposure of "gap filler" material, which is ok, and they expect a full update on that for Monday.
If everything goes well tomorrow and Monday, then Discovery's heat shield will have the 100% GO for re-entry and landing.

Astronauts today completed a 6 and a half hour EVA (space walk) where they tested two different methods of repairing heat shield damage while on-orbit. Both tests went beautifully and, in some respects, might be considered better than expected (since these procedures for repair had not been tested in space before).

They've also decided to extend the mission by 1 day. Nothing really unexpected there. All in all, things look good so far, with two critical areas still to be cleared for re-entry and landing.

On another note, related to the entire shuttle fleet, it seems that Mike Griffin is quite optimistic about getting the shuttle fleet returned to flight quickly. He forsees a quick resolution to the foam problem, according to SPACE.com. I suppose we'll see about that...(I'm not sure I believe it yet).

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Groetjes Albert lening
Van Leeuwenhoek Lyceum, Hoofddorp.