Launch Anticipation: Mixed Feelings About Discovery’s Flight
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Flight Director Paul Hill (foreground) and astronaut Stephen N. Frick, spacecraft communicator (CAPCOM), monitor communications in the Shuttle Flight Control Room (WFCR) in Johnson Space Center’s (JSC) Mission Control Center (MCC) with the STS-114 crewmembers during a fully-integrated simulation on October 13. CREDIT: NASA/JSC. |
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.– As NASA stands poised to launch its first shuttle mission in more than two years, a mixture of both excitement and apprehension fill the hearts of some of those watching over the upcoming space shot.
Weather permitting, the space shuttle Discovery is set to launch Wednesday afternoon on a mission to put seven astronauts in orbit and show that NASA has once again overcome tragedy in pursuit of space exploration. The mission is the first scheduled shuttle flight since the 2003 accident that resulted in the loss of the Columbia orbiter and its entire astronaut crew during STS-107.
“I feel like it’s time,” Doug Brown, brother of STS-107 mission specialist David Brown told SPACE.com in a telephone interview. “It’s a chance to refocus and sort of reaffirm that we know why and what we’re doing.”
The space shuttle Columbia broke apart during reentry on Feb. 1, 2003 after a successful 16-day science mission. The accident ground NASA’s shuttle program to a halt while investigators traced its cause, ultimately pinning the incident on foam insulation debris that struck Columbia’s left wing and punched hole in the orbiter’s protective, heat-resistant skin. Over the last two and a half years NASA has strived to reduce the chance of such an accident occurring again, redesigning shuttle external tanks to prevent the loss of foam like that which doomed Columbia, as well as potentially harmful ice.
The result is Discovery’s STS-114 mission, a test flight designed to not only verify NASA’s external tank modifications, but evaluate a new orbital inspection boom and other tools tailored for thermal protection system repair. NASA hopes to launch Discovery on a 12-day flight at about 3:51 p.m. EDT (1951 GMT). The launch countdown has been ticking away since Sunday, and only the threat of afternoon thunderstorms cloud the space shot’s prospects, NASA officials said.
“Flying in this morning, we saw the vehicle on the pad and it absolutely struck me that we’re back to spaceflight,” astronaut David Wolf, head of the EVA branch at NASA’s Astronaut Office, told SPACE.com here Monday at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. “There’s a real excitement here, and of course a mixed tension coming off an accident.”
A veteran of four shuttle flights and one long-duration stint aboard the Russian space station Mir, Wolf said that observers on the ground have a harder time at launch than the astronauts seated inside a shuttle’s crew compartment.
“Somehow, with your friends in there and people you know, it’s always scarier than when you’re in it,” he said. “It always completely captures me to see a shuttle launch.”
Discovery’s flight is the first of two test missions to evaluate post-Columbia changes in the shuttle launch system to lower flight risks to what NASA officials have called an “acceptable” level.
“David was very big on the [space] program…so it must go on,” Brown said, adding that his brother, like himself, was aware of the risks of human spaceflight. “I don’t have a problem in that it’s risky and we’re going to choose to accept risk. While it’s painful that it’s my family that’s affected, it’s inherent to the business.”
Like many in NASA, the loss of the STS-107 astronauts has not left the mind of Paul Hill, lead flight director for the STS-114 mission, who has spent the last six days tying up loose ends at Johnson Space Center in Houston where the spaceflight will be coordinated after Discovery reaches orbit.
“There aren’t many days that I don’t drive into work and not think of the accident, it’s something that creeps back,” Hill said in a telephone interview. “But this is a tough job and during the mission we owe it to Eileen and her crew to have our eye on the ball.
“When it’s over, when I’m walking out of the control room, I’ll be thinking about Rick [Husband],” Hill said of Columbia’s last commander.
Hill said Discovery’s spaceflight, and ultimately the rest of the orbiter missions set to complete the International Space Station, are pivotal to the future of NASA’s plans for the human exploration of space.
“We aren’t here to keep doing roundy-rounds in Earth orbit,” Hill said. “We are here to push outward. I want, someday, to know that humanity will leave the solar system, and you don’t get any closer staying in low Earth orbit.”
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