Shuttle set for Nov. 14 liftoff

BY JAMES DEAN • FLORIDA TODAY• October 31, 2008

NASA on Thursday confirmed Endeavour’s launch for 7:55 p.m. Nov. 14, but it said the final mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope would be delayed until at least May.

More time is needed to prepare spare parts that astronauts will take to the observatory. They will replace a Hubble computer system that crashed last month and forced the postponement of Atlantis’ planned Oct. 14 liftoff.

“We don’t want to take any chances on bringing a box up there that isn’t going to be 100 percent and work to the absolute best that it can,” said Hubble Project Manager Preston Burch of the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.

The Hubble mission’s delay past February likely reshuffles next year’s shuttle lineup, but it might help NASA meet a July 11 target date for the first flight test of Constellation program rockets intended to return American astronauts to the moon by 2020.

Next summer’s planned Ares 1-X flight needs to use the mobile launcher platform on which Atlantis is now stacked in the Vehicle Assembly Building.

Because of the Hubble mission’s extended delay, Atlantis will be disconnected from the external tank and launcher platform and returned to a hangar.

Discovery will take its place on the stack in preparation for a previously scheduled February flight to deliver a final set of American solar wings to the International Space Station.

After Discovery blasts off, the mobile launcher platform will be handed over to Ares 1-X managers for modifications needed to support the rocket, months earlier than if they had to wait for the Hubble mission.

By finding out now that a February Hubble mission is impossible, “we were able to respond in a manner that we could really help Constellation out, so this is a great thing for us,” said Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA’s associate administrator for space operations.

Additional reconfiguring of Launch Complex 39B must still wait until after the Hubble mission because the pad must be available for a rescue shuttle.

Gerstenmaier spoke Thursday after an executive-level flight readiness review at Kennedy Space Center, which determined that Endeavour is in good shape to make the 124th shuttle flight.

Endeavour had been standing by as a rescue shuttle for the Hubble crew if necessary, but is now on track for a 15-day mission to supply and repair the International Space Station.

A seven-person crew will deliver bedroom, bathroom and kitchen furnishings and a water recycling system needed for the outpost to accommodate six-person crews that can tackle more science experiments.

Spacewalkers also will perform repairs to massive joints that rotate the station’s power-generating solar arrays so that they track the sun.

Endeavour will leave one astronaut behind on the station, but it will take another home.

“On the surface, it doesn’t look that exciting,” shuttle Program Manager John Shannon said of the mission. “That could not be more wrong.”

He said the water-recycling and environmental systems in particular would test systems needed over the next 40 to 50 years on trips to the moon or beyond.

Gerstenmaier said the readiness review included one dissenting opinion from an unidentified engineer, who suggested that a newly available test be performed on the turbopump in the shuttle’s three liquid-fueled main engines.

The test was unnecessary for Endeavour, Gerstenmaier said, but would be added for future missions.

“The vehicle is ready,” he said.

The crew for the Endeavour mission performed a practice countdown this week at Kennedy Space Center. They’ll launch Nov. 4. (Michael R. Brown, FLORIDA TODAY)

2 p.m. Nov. 29

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