NASA Clears Astronaut To Spend Months On Space Station, Rejecting Concerns About Russian Soyuz Vehicle As Emergency Escape

Space Shuttle Discovery Gets Clean Review For Launch From Kennedy At 5:02 P.M. ET May 31

New Launch Dates To Be Set Thursday For Atlantis To Fix Hubble Telescope, Maybe From Aug. 28 To Oct. 8; Endeavour Likely Slips From Oct. 16 To Nov. 10

NASA has cleared U.S. astronaut Greg Chamitoff to spend half a year on the International Space Station (ISS) as an Expedition 17 crew member, after deciding that the Russian Soyuz spacecraft docked to the ISS is sufficiently reliable to use as a life raft for a ride back to Earth in an emergency, NASA officials said today.

NASA doesn’t, however, see the Soyuz as sufficiently safe for routine, non-emergency reentries and landings, after two consecutive Soyuz flights experienced major problems returning to land — steep ballistic descents and hard landings far from their targeted touchdown points in Kazakhstan. Two astronauts suffered back injuries in one landing. (Please see Space & Missile Defense Report, Monday, May 5, 2008.)

Russian experts are studying what went wrong, but they are unlikely to have a final answer before Chamitoff is slated to head aloft to the space station.

The spacecraft that will carry Chamitoff aloft to the ISS, Space Shuttle Discovery, scored a clean bill of health in a flight readiness review, and was cleared for launch from Pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in a window opening at 5:02 p.m. ET on Saturday, May 31. The launch will be carried live on NASA TV, at www.nasa.gov on the Web.

A "probabilistic risk assessment" shows the odds are sufficiently reasonable to warrant relying on the Soyuz docked to the ISS as an escape vehicle, according to Bill Gerstenmaier, associate NASA administrator for space operations.

That is based on the fact there is little chance that the ISS would suffer such a major emergency that astronauts and cosmonauts would have to evacuate it by entering the Soyuz and returning to Earth, he said. Gerstenmaier and other NASA officials spoke in a briefing for reporters after they participated in a flight readiness review today to assess the condition of Discovery. There would be, he said, "a low probability" that crew members would have to use Soyuz for an escape, something like one in 124 over a six months period. So, for an emergency return to Earth, "Soyuz is OK." Gerstenmaier added that "if we need the Soyuz vehicle for an emergency return … I think it is still available."

Therefore, he said, the bottom line is this: "We now know that the Soyuz is acceptable for an emergency return, [and therefore] it is acceptable to leave Greg [Chamitoff] on orbit, so that’s our basic plan." Gerstenmaier said at this point, NASA’s assessment is that "there’s a good chance that it will return the crew" to Earth in an emergency. If later some knowledge comes to light contradicting that decision, a finding that "the Soyuz is not acceptable as a return vehicle, then we would go take some appropriate action. But we haven’t seen anything along those lines." He declined to get into details as to whether Chamitoff could be brought back to Earth with the return flight of Discovery, as an eighth crew member on the shuttle, saying that would be something handled in real time if the need arose. There have been some conceptual examinations of that, and NASA will be prepared if that is needed. But Gerstenmaier doesn’t expect "a major breaking piece of information that would come in between now and launch" of Discovery "that would change where we’re heading."

That does not mean, however, that NASA views the Soyuz as acceptable for a nominal, non-emergency reentry and return to Earth, he said. Russian experts have many questions to answer before the Soyuz would return to Earth in October.

NASA is awaiting word from Russian experts examining the last Soyuz vehicle that landed, and their investigation is "very thorough," Gerstenmaier said, following his visit to Russia last week. He doesn’t wish to rush the Russians "to give an answer that’s not a good answer," he added. Discovering just what went wrong "is going to take some time," and at this point, the Russian review team is not "near final closure" on the issue. "That needs to get resolved by the fall," not right now.

"I didn’t see anything from my Russian activities that affected anything with the launch [of Space Shuttle Discovery] that we should do differently," Gerstenmaier said.

That means it would make no sense to defer launching Discovery a week or two in hopes of obtaining a final answer about the Soyuz defect, he said. "We couldn’t find any upside of delaying," but there was a downside to deferring the Discovery launch and further disturbing already-disrupted shuttle launch schedules.

Another minor anomaly was that a space suit was found to have a rubber glove with a tear between the small and ring fingers, a briefer said. The rubber glove safely keeps pressure on an astronaut in event of an otherwise deadly depressurization of a cabin in the ascent to and return from space. The glove is part of the launch escape suit, similar to the spacesuit gloves used during spacewalks. Spare gloves large enough to fit any astronaut’s hands will be flown in case there’s a problem with any of the launch escape suit gloves, according to Mike Leinbach, shuttle launch director.

Discovery

The Space Shuttle Discovery flight will mark the halfway point in the remaining life of the space shuttle program, between the loss of Space Shuttle Columbia in 2003 and the mandated end of shuttle flights in 2010.

With the end of the impending STS-124 Mission, when Discovery comes to wheels stop on the runway, NASA will have accomplished 10 shuttle missions since the Columbia flight, and another 10 shuttle liftoffs will remain, John Shannon, space shuttle program manager, noted. Gerstenmaier said that would include seven shuttle flights to finish construction of the space station, plus the Hubble Space Telescope repair flight, and two critically-needed flights to haul large amounts of spare parts to the space station to keep it running after the shuttles, with their enormous cargo bays, no longer are flying.

"We need those spares on station, we need that hardware on station, and if we can get them within the timeframe that we’re allowed through September 30, 2010, we’ll go fly those flights," Gerstenmaier said.

Except for a malfunctioning multiplexer-demultiplexer (a computer interface) that had to be swapped out, and a few other minor items, the Discovery advance toward launch is smooth as glass, Shannon indicated.

This Discovery flight will be the first with a completely revamped external fuel tank, Shannon said. NASA has made many tank modifications over the months since the Columbia disaster.

Then, during launch and ascent, a large chunk of insulation ripped loose from the external fuel tank and smashed into the leading edge of a wing on the Columbia orbiter vehicle, punching a hole in the heat shield on the wing. Later, during an attempted return to Earth, scorching hot gases of reentry rushed into the wing, heating it to the point of structural failure. The ship and crew were lost.

Since then, at a cost well over $2 billion that NASA had to filch from other programs, the space agency made many modifications in the fuel tank design, such as using less insulation in many areas.

Also, use of different metals, installation of video cameras on the tank to watch for foam insulation tearing loose, and safety steps such as repeatedly inspecting the orbiter vehicle after it arrives in space, all have made it highly unlikely that another Columbia-style disaster could occur.

"I expect this to be the best-performing tank that we have had to date," Shannon said, bolstered by the fact that this will be a day-lit launch, where any foam problems should be highly visible to video cameras.

The Japanese Kibo Laboratory that Discovery will carry aloft for addition to the space station will be the largest international-partner lab ever hauled to the ISS, Shannon said.

It is so large that some modifications, such as strapping down cameras and leaving a grappling manipulator boom up on the space station in the last flight, were necessary to get the giant cylindrical module to fit in the shuttle payload bay.

Things have gone so smoothly in the run-up to the Discovery liftoff that crews at KSC will get a rare break: four days off on the Memorial Day weekend. Some, however, may spend part of that time watching on NASA TV as the Phoenix spacecraft lands on Mars Sunday. (Please see separate story in this issue.)

New Shuttle Launch Dates

Separately, NASA is about to announce revisions in its manifest of future shuttle missions, delaying each shuttle liftoff by several weeks.

Shannon said it’s possible the review panel convening Thursday will decide to postpone the Space Shuttle Atlantis launch from Aug. 28 to Oct. 8 on the STS-125 Mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope, and the launch of Space Shuttle Endeavour from Oct. 16 to Nov. 10 on the STS-126 Mission to deliver a multi-purpose logistics module to the space station.

NASA will announce by the end of the week whether these launch dates are adopted.

In turn, that may mean that there will be some delay in the flight of the next-generation rocket, the Ares I-X, as part of the future U.S. space transportation system that also eventually will include the Orion space capsule. Ares I-X now is set for liftoff April 15 from KSC Pad 39B.

Phoenix Spacecraft Set For Risky Landing On Mars Polar Region Sunday

Visitor From Earth May Show Future Astronauts Where To Get Oxygen, Fuel, To Live On Mars

The Phoenix Mars Lander spacecraft is poised to end a months-long interplanetary odyssey when it touches down Sunday — gently, it is hoped — in a red planet polar region.

That landing will come as Americans back on another planet celebrate the Memorial Day weekend.

If that risky landing on Mars comes off successfully and Phoenix can carry out its mission, the spacecraft may provide hugely significant answers to how astronauts one day will be able to live on Mars for extended periods, perhaps showing where and how they can obtain oxygen to breath, fuel to heat their homes and power machinery, grow food and more.

Phoenix will search for water ice in the frigid northern reaches of Mars, and assuming that ice is found in plentiful quantities, then it can be melted into water — H2O (two hydrogen molecules, one oxygen molecule) — that would provide oxygen for breathing, and for combustion with hydrogen fuel.

While finding ice in the polar region would be good, that’s an inhospitable climate. Rather, what NASA leaders are hoping to find as a jackpot would be a large quantity of ice closer to the Mars equator, a much pleasanter clime, according to Prof. Ray Arvidson of Washington University in St. Louis and chairman of the Phoenix landing site working group.

In an interview with Space Missile Defense Report, Arvidson said the ideal would be to find a glacial deposit of ice nearer the equator, or to find deeply-buried ice or water there.

That could provide astronauts with the basics they need for an extended stay on Mars, the closest planet to Earth.

Further, he noted, if water is found, that could be a sign that life of some form, perhaps microbial, at one time existed on the red planet.

Landing: Seven Minutes Of Terror

NASA leaders are hoping to receive a signal that the spacecraft landed successfully sometime around 7:53 p.m. ET Sunday. It will take some time for that signal to travel back to Earth after the landing.

Until then, program leaders will be sweating it out, because even though the NASA motto is that failure isn’t an option, it is a very real possibility in any attempt to land a spacecraft on Mars. One Mars lander perished as it thumped down in 1999.

"I’ll be worried until we get a signal" that the Phoenix landing succeeded, said Edward J. Weiler, associate NASA administrator for the Science Mission Directorate. He and other program leaders briefed journalists at NASA headquarters in Washington. Referring to a mission that began with a launch from Earth Aug. 4, he said, "This is not a trip to grandma’s house. Putting a spacecraft safely on Mars is hard and risky." Phoenix will be far from home, 120 million miles from Earth.

To succeed, Phoenix will have to manage the neat trick — in just seven hair-raising minutes — of flaming into the Martian atmosphere at 12,600 miles an hour relative to the surface of Mars, slowing to 1,100 miles an hour before deploying parachutes designed to take 16,000 pounds of force, dropping off a heat shield, and then firing thrusters to slow it to a gentle landing at 5 mph on the icy surface, twisting the craft so its solar arrays will be deployed in the proper direction.

Oh, and watch out for any boulder that Phoenix might hit on landing, tipping the spacecraft over and ending the mission before it begins. The 40-mile-long, relatively flat (less than 5 degree slopes) polar landing zone was chosen in part because there are few rocks in the area, according to images NASA received from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment, or HiRISE, camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter satellite peering down from above the planet.

A week from now, the first images from Phoenix may come back to Earth, around 11 a.m. next Monday.

Assuming that this magic-trick landing goes well, the first priority of Phoenix will be to dig down and check for water ice in the frigid land. At temperatures in that polar region, chances of finding liquid water are remote. And whatever Phoenix does, it will have to be done with dispatch.

Even if Phoenix lands successfully, it won’t be around for long, unlike the Mars Rovers Spirit and Odyssey, which have roamed equatorial areas of the red planet for years, far longer than was expected. This mission will have to be performed quickly, because Phoenix has a lifespan of months at most, not years.

The problem is that Phoenix faces not only brutally cold weather, with average temperatures of minus-50 Fahrenheit, swinging from minus-80 up to a relatively toasty minus-20. There also is the fact that the polar land of the almost hospitable midnight sun when it arrives there will become, as winter sets in, a deep-dark time of sunless, bitter conditions, a seemingly endless night lasting three or four months.

With no sunlight for Phoenix solar arrays to convert into electricity, the craft will reach a point where it runs out of power and freezes to death. Chances of its lifeless corpse coming back to life may not be nil, but close to it.

"It’s extraordinarily unlikely that it will happen," said Barry Goldstein, Phoenix project manager at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. True, after a few months in the frigid darkness of the long polar night, when sunlight returns in the spring, it might hit Phoenix solar arrays, and maybe the craft would come out of its "Lazarus mode" and begin operating, but "do not expect that."

In 2002, the Mars Odyssey orbiter discovered that plentiful water ice lies just beneath the surface throughout much of high-latitude Mars. NASA chose the Phoenix proposal over 24 other proposals to become the first endeavor in the Mars Scout program of competitively selected missions.

"Phoenix will land farther north on Mars than any previous mission," Goldstein said.

"The Phoenix mission not only studies the northern permafrost region, but takes the next step in Mars exploration by determining whether this region, which may encompass as much as 25 percent of the Martian surface, is habitable," said Peter Smith, Phoenix principal investigator at the University of Arizona at Tucson.

The solar-powered robotic lander will manipulate a 7.7-foot arm to scoop up samples of underground ice and soil lying above the ice. There is a rock abrasion tool, or RAT, to cut into hard surfaces for materials to sample. Onboard laboratory instruments will analyze the samples. Cameras and a Canadian-supplied weather station will supply other information about the site’s environment.

While the top roughly 5-inch-thick layer of dirt is loose, the underlying ice-filled layers are hard as concrete. That loose topsoil is interesting, because it has been blown to the landing area by winds, coming from many other parts of Mars.

One research goal is to assess whether conditions at the site ever have been favorable for microbial life. The composition and texture of soil above the ice could give clues to whether the ice ever melts in response to long-term climate cycles. Another important question is whether the scooped-up samples contain carbon-based chemicals that are potential building blocks and food for life.

Here, the spacecraft doesn’t have systems such as microscopes to detect life or signs of past life directly. But Phoenix does have the ability to gather soil and ice samples, heat them, and detect if chemicals signal that life might have existed. The spacecraft even carries some water, so it can wet dry soil samples for testing.

The Phoenix mission is led by Smith with project management at JPL. International contributions come from the Canadian Space Agency; the University of Neuchatel, Switzerland; the universities of Copenhagen and Aarhus, Denmark; the Max Planck Institute, Germany; and the Finnish Meteorological Institute.

Lockheed Martin Corp. [LMT] contributed Phoenix, and the Mars rovers as well.

Ariane 5 Launch Reset From Friday To May 30

An Ariane 5 rocket carrying the Skynet 5C and the Turksat 3A satellites will launch on May 30 instead of the earlier-scheduled May 23.

The launch window is from 5:52 p.m. to 6:35 p.m.

That delay was ordered to provide time to perform complementary checks on the Ariane 5 launch vehicle

Launchers want liftoff to occur as early as possible in the launch window.

SpaceX Poised For Falcon 1 Launch In June

Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) plans to launch a Falcon 1 rocket next month.

Under a Department of Defense contract with the Operationally Responsive Space Office, the Falcon 1 will carry the first Jumpstart mission payload.

The rocket will lift off from the SpaceX launch complex in the Central Pacific Marshall Islands, Kwajalein Atoll.

Jumpstart aims to establish a preliminary framework for responsive contracting, and to demonstrate the ability to rapidly integrate and execute a mission, from initial call-up to launch.

Progress Launches To Supply International Space Station

A Progress unmanned cargo ship launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, Starsem announced.

Starsem, Arianespace and their Russian partners were involved in the launch, which brought hundreds of pounds of supplies to the station.

Starsem is the Soyuz Company. Its shareholders are Arianespace, Astrium, the Russian Federal Space Agency and the Samara Space Center.

NLOS Launched At White Sands, Raytheon Announces

A Non Line-of-Sight-Launch System (NLOS-LS) Precision Attack Missile was launched at White Sands Missile Range, N.M., Raytheon Co. [RTN] announced.

The missile was launched by NetFires LLC, a joint venture between Raytheon and Lockheed Martin Corp. [LMT].

That control test vehicle flight launched from a tactical NLOS-LS Container Launch Unit, and sets the stage for further all up round testing of NLOS- LS this year.

The test met or exceeded all test parameters, according to Raytheon. The missile exited from a tactical NLOS-LS Container Launch Unit, deployed the missile wings and fins, and transitioned to stable flight. Additionally, the precision attack missile demonstrated all guidance commands and achieved desired acceleration within the maximum and minimum boundaries, matching the integrated flight simulation predictions.

Airframe dynamic response and airframe drag data were collected during missile flight, as well as performance data on the wings and fins, Non Line- of-Sight navigation system, rocket motor, control actuator system, thrust vector control, electronic safe arm device, air data sensor, thermal battery and telemeter.

NLOS-LS is one of 14 Future Combat Systems (FCS) core systems. It will operate as a part of the FCS systems-of-systems to meet requirements of the Army’s future brigade combat teams and provide increased capability for the current force’s modular brigade combat teams. It is also one of the key Littoral Combat Ship mission modules. Compared to systems with equivalent firepower (kills per combat load), NLOS-LS provides a modular, highly deployable and flexible precision fires capability to the Army, Navy and joint maneuver forces for a very low life-cycle system cost, according to Raytheon.

NASA’s Shuttle and Rocket Missions

NOTE: NASA SOON WILL RESCHEDULE SPACE SHUTTLE MISSIONS, BEGINNING WITH THE ATLANTIS LIFTOFF NOW SET FOR AUG. 28. SHUTTLE MISSIONS EACH WILL BE DELAYED ABOUT FOUR TO FIVE WEEKS.

A variety of vehicles, launch sites on both U.S. coasts, shifting dates and times… the NASA Launch Schedule is easy to decipher by checking out Launch Schedule 101 that explains how it all works.

Updated — April 25, 2008 – 2:45 p.m. EDT

Legend: + Targeted For | *No Earlier Than (Tentative) | **To Be Determined

2008 Launches

Date: May 31 +

Mission: STS-124

Launch Vehicle: Space Shuttle Discovery

Launch Site: Kennedy Space Center – Launch Pad 39A

Launch Time: 5:02 p.m. EDT

Description: Space shuttle Discovery on mission STS-124 will transport the Kibo Japanese Experiment Module – Pressurized Module (JEM-PM) and the Japanese Remote Manipulator System (JEM-RMS) to the International Space Station.

Date: June 15

Mission: OSTM

Launch Vehicle: United Launch Alliance Delta II

Launch Site: Vandenberg Air Force Base – Launch Pad SLC-2

Launch Window: 1:47 – 1:56 a.m. PDT/4:47 – 4:56 a.m. EDT

Description: The Ocean Surface Topography Mission on the Jason-2 satellite will be a follow-on to the Jason mission.

Date: Aug. 9 *

Mission: IBEX

Launch Vehicle: Orbital Sciences Pegasus XL Rocket

Launch Site: Reagan Test Site, Kwajalein Atoll

Description: IBEX’s science objective is to discover the global interaction between the solar wind and the interstellar medium and will achieve this objective by taking a set of global energetic neutral atom images that will answer four fundamental science questions.

Date: Aug. 28 +

Mission: STS-125

Launch Vehicle: Space Shuttle Atlantis

Launch Site: Kennedy Space Center – Launch Pad 39A

Description: Space Shuttle Atlantis will fly seven astronauts into space for the fifth and final servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope. During the 11-day flight, the crew will repair and improve the observatory’s capabilities through 2013.

Date: Sept. 14 +

Mission: TacSat-3

Launch Vehicle: Orbital Sciences Minotaur Rocket

Launch Site: Wallops Flight Facility – Goddard Space Flight Center

Description: NASA will support the Air Force launch of the TacSat-3 satellite, managed by the Air Force Research Laboratory’s Space Vehicles Directorate. TacSat-3 will demonstrate the capability to furnish real-time data to the combatant commander. NASA Ames will fly a microsat and NASA Wallops will fly the CubeSats on this flight in addition to providing the launch range.

Date: Oct. 16 +

Mission: STS-126

Launch Vehicle: Space Shuttle Endeavour

Launch Site: Kennedy Space Center – Launch Pad 39A

Description: Space Shuttle Endeavour launching on assembly flight ULF2, will deliver a Multi-Purpose Logistics Module to the International Space Station.

Date: Oct. 28

Mission: LRO/LCROSS

Launch Vehicle: United Launch Alliance Atlas V

Launch Site: Cape Canaveral Air Force Station – Launch Complex 41

Description: The mission objectives of the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite are to advance the Vision for Space Exploration by confirming the presence or absence of water ice in a permanently shadowed crater at either the Moon’s North or South Pole.

Date: Nov. 5

Mission: GOES-O

Launch Vehicle: United Launch Alliance Delta IV

Launch Site: Cape Canaveral Air Force Station – Launch Complex 17

Description: NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) are actively engaged in a cooperative program, the multimission Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite series N-P. This series will be a vital contributor to weather, solar and space operations, and science.

Date: Dec. 1 *

Mission: SDO

Launch Vehicle: United Launch Alliance Atlas V

Launch Site: Cape Canaveral Air Force Station – Launch Complex 41

Description: The first Space Weather Research Network mission in the Living With a Star (LWS) Program of NASA.

Date: Dec. 4 +

Mission: STS-119

Launch Vehicle: Space Shuttle Discovery

Launch Site: Kennedy Space Center – Launch Pad 39A

Description: Space Shuttle Discovery launching on assembly flight 15A, will deliver the fourth starboard truss segment to the International Space Station.

Date: Dec. 15

Mission: OCO

Launch Vehicle: Orbital Sciences Taurus Rocket

Launch Site: Vandenberg Air Force Base – Launch Pad SLC 576-E

Description: The Orbiting Carbon Observatory is a new Earth orbiting mission sponsored by NASA’s Earth System Science Pathfinder Program.

2009 Launches

Date: Feb. 1

Mission: NOAA-N Prime

Launch Vehicle: United Launch Alliance Delta II

Launch Site: Vandenberg Air Force Base – Launch Pad SLC-2

Description: NOAA-N Prime is the latest polar-orbiting satellite developed by NASA/Goddard Spaceflight Center for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). NOAA uses two satellites, a morning and afternoon satellite, to ensure every part of the Earth is observed at least twice every 12 hours. NOAA-N will collect information about Earth’s atmosphere and environment to improve weather prediction and climate research across the globe.

Date: Feb. 16

Mission: Kepler

Launch Vehicle: United Launch Alliance Delta II

Launch Site: Cape Canaveral Air Force Station – Launch Complex 17 – Pad 17-B

Description: The Kepler Mission, a NASA Discovery mission, is specifically designed to survey our region of the Milky Way galaxy to detect and characterize hundreds of Earth-size and smaller planets in or near the habitable zone.

Date: March 1

Mission: Glory

Launch Vehicle: Orbital Sciences Taurus Rocket

Launch Site: Vandenberg Air Force Base – Launch Pad SLC 576-E

Description: The Glory Mission will help increase our understanding of the Earth’s energy balance by collecting data on the properties of aerosols and black carbon in the Earth’s atmosphere and how the Sun’s irradiance affects the Earth’s climate