With the
space shuttle Discovery and its cargo at the launch pad, the pieces are all but
set for NASA's STS-114 mission, the agency's first orbiter flight in more than
two years.
Shuttle
workers are expected to open Discovery's cargo bay doors Thursday and prepare
the orbiter for the Friday installation of its Raffaello
cargo module, which is laden with food, water, equipment and supplies bound for
the International Space Station (ISS), NASA officials said.
"It's
exciting to have both the shuttle and its cargo module at the pad," said NASA
spokesperson Kylie Clem in a telephone interview. "It means we're that much
closer to launch."
Discovery rolled
out to Kennedy Space Center's Pad 39B on Wednesday, about two days after a
cargo canister delivered the Raffaello module and a pair of pallets carrying space
station replacement parts and spacewalk components for the shuttle's STS-114
mission.
NASA officials
plan to launch the STS-114 spaceflight no earlier than July 13 in what they hope
will be the first shuttle flight since the Columbia accident, which destroyed
one orbiter and killed all seven STS-107 astronauts aboard during reentry on
Feb. 1, 2003. Investigators later found that wing damage caused by external
tank foam debris at launch led to the loss of Columbia.
Shuttle officials
hope that two years of modifications to NASA's external tanks and the orbiters
themselves will increase shuttle safety.
"Everyone
at United Space Alliance (USA) is excited to have Discovery back at the launch
pad," said William Pickavance, vice president of Florida operations for the shuttle
contractor, in a written statement to SPACE.com.
"The NASA/shuttle team has worked hard to ensure that all the shuttle system
components are safe and ready for flight and we believe we are there."
But according
to an independent safety panel, there still remains work to do. NASA has not
yet met three
of the 15 recommendations that Columbia investigators believed should be
fulfilled before the space agency launches its next orbiter, the panel said
last week.
That panel,
the Return to Flight Task Force chaired by former astronauts Thomas Stafford
and Richard Covey, said more analysis is needed on NASA's efforts to eliminate harmful
launch debris that could cause shuttle damage much like that seen during
Columbia's launch. Additional analysis into NASA's orbiter hardening
activities, as well as the orbiter inspection and tile repair abilities were
also required, the task force said.
Meanwhile,
NASA's continues to prepare for a July space shot for Discovery, with mission
managers reportedly setting a tentative flight readiness review for the end of
June.
"The
payload is on track to be placed in the orbiter on Friday, which puts us on
pace for the launch window of July 13 through 31," Pickavance said. "As of now,
everything looks good for that July launch."
Discovery's
STS-114 mission, which is designed to test new hardware and run through
potential repair methods, is expected to be followed by a second mission,
STS-121 aboard Atlantis, later this year. Both spaceflights are vital for the International
Space Station, which hasn't received the any large cargo deliveries--or sent
home any equally large shipments of unneeded equipment afforded by shuttle
supply modules like Raffaello--since December 2002.
"The space
station needs a lot of supplies taken up for this mission and aboard the next
space shuttle flight," Clem said. "But what is more important is the amount of
cargo [the shuttle] can bring back down."
NASA's three
remaining space shuttles can ferry much more material to and from the ISS than
Russian Soyuz spacecraft, the only vehicles currently transporting station
astronauts and their equipment to and from orbit.
Russia's
unmanned Progress spacecraft also perform periodic resupply missions to the
space station, but are designed to burn up during reentry. The next ISS cargo
ship, Progress 18, is scheduled to launch from the Russian Federal Space Agency's
Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan later tonight, June 16, at 7:09 p.m. EDT
(2309 GMT) and dock at the space station on June 18.
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