on Monday, punching its way through cloudy skies to close the curtain
on night-time shuttle launches and kick off the final year of liftoffs
for the aging orbiter fleet.
Low cloud cover almost scrubbed the attempt for the
second straight morning. But in the end Endeavour’s picture-perfect
launch, on time at
Only four shuttle flights now remain — all scheduled daytime launches — before
It was a bittersweet moment for the agency and its contractor workforce.
The 13-day mission is the first of the final five, a long-anticipated fate realized last week when President
canceling Constellation, the planned successor to the shuttle.
The dramatic shakeup of
managers and astronauts did their best to ignore the distractions and
focus on the task at hand: sending Endeavour to the space station on a
major construction mission.
“OK Zambo, looks like the weather came together
tonight, vehicle is in great shape, so it’s time to go fly,” shuttle
launch director
Zamka was joined by his crew: rookie pilot
In a post-launch press briefing,
officials said they saw foam break away from the external fuel tank
soon after takeoff, but that their initial assessment determined that
no “gross damage” was done. Falling foam that damaged space shuttle
The main goal of Endeavour’s mission is to add a
final compartment to the station. Named Tranquility, the module will
provide astronauts additional room to work and a windowed dome, or
cupola, that will afford them an unparalleled view outside. Currently
there are but small portal windows on some compartments at the station.
“The cupola is going to change the quality of life
for astronauts who live on station because it’s going to give them a
window on the world,” NASA Administrator
“Just having the opportunity to float into something
like the cupola and reinvigorate yourself is going to make an
incredible difference to their quality of life.”
Tranquility and its seven-pane bay window were constructed in
and are the last major components for the station. It will take three
spacewalks to install the new additions. Once attached to the left side
of the station’s central Unity module, the station will be 90 percent
complete.
The module will house life support equipment, exercise gear and a toilet.
originally planned to put Tranquility on the right side of the station,
but engineers decided to move it to provide better visibility and more
clearance for Soyuz spacecraft docking nearby.
While spacewalkers are busy attaching the new room,
the rest of the crew will be working on replacing part of the station’s
water recycling system. The urine processor shut down recently when a
blockage disabled the unit that converts waste into clean water for the
station’s six full-time residents.
Obama’s
international partners — said he was very happy about the station’s
potential life extension. The extra time, he said, would “give us a
great opportunity to use to the full extent the (station).”
But while the budget was good news for the station,
it represents a fatal blow to the Constellation program and its Ares
rockets and capsules that were supposed to replace the shuttle and
return astronauts to the moon by 2020.
A
found that the program was too expensive and behind schedule. It
recommended canceling Constellation and using commercial rockets to
take astronauts to the station. Until then astronauts must hitch rides
aboard Russian Soyuz rockets at more than
The
“Distractions are there, shock is there, uncertainty,” said shuttle Launch director
“But I do not worry about the folks on console when they’re doing their
job. I do not worry about the people … working on the orbiters. …
When teams are faced with challenges they come together and they act
like a professional team.”
The final space shuttle mission is scheduled for
—
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