CAPE
CANAVERAL, Fla. - While Tuesday's near flawless launch of the space shuttle
Discovery is a major win for NASA, there is still a long road ahead to ensure
the success of its mission and integrity of the spacecraft, mission managers
said just after the space shot.
"We've
accomplished a tremendous amount, but this is the launch," said William Readdy, NASA's associate administrator of space operations,
during a post-launch press briefing. "We've got 12 days of orbital
operations to do and then we've got to get Discovery safely back home."
Discovery's
STS-114 mission is NASA's first shuttle flight since the 2003 Columbia
disaster, which left seven astronauts dead, destroyed one orbiter and halted
the space agency's shuttle program.
Shuttle
officials said it would take at least five more days to process all the new
imagery, radar data, wing leading edge sensors and orbital photographs of
Discovery to fully understand how the orbiter weathered its launch.
"By Flight
Day 6 [July 31] we expect to have a full story put together, have all the
interpretation done and a complete knowledge of the status of the orbiter,"
NASA's deputy shuttle program manager Wayne Hale told reporters. "We are going
to know, without a doubt, the status of the [orbiter's] thermal protection
system before the Discovery crew comes home."
Discovery
and its STS-114 crew, commanded by veteran astronaut Eileen Collins, punched
through a blue, cloud-dotted sky at 10:39 a.m. EDT (1439 GMT) today. The space
shot marked the first time in more than two years that NASA has launched an
orbiter laden with a human crew.
"Take note
of what you saw here today," NASA chief Michael Griffin told reporters. "The
power and the majesty of launch, of course, but also the confidence and the
professionalism, the sheer gall, pluckiness grittiness of this team that pulled
this program out of the depths of despair and made it fly."
Before
Discovery's STS-114 launch, NASA's shuttle fleet was grounded due to the loss
of the Columbia astronauts and their orbiter during the STS-107 mission.
Columbia broke apart during reentry on Feb. 1, 2003 after sustaining wing
damage from external tank launch debris during liftoff 16 days earlier.
Since then,
NASA engineers have strived to build what they bid as their safest external
tank, complete with new heaters to prevent ice debris formation and new
insulation foam applications to prevent shedding during launch.
"I thank
the men and women of NASA who have dedicated themselves to putting our space
program back on track,'' President George W. Bush said in a statement. "Our
space program is a source of great national pride, and this flight is an
essential step toward our goal of continuing to lead the world in space
science, human space flight, and space exploration.''
There was
some question during the post-launch briefing over an apparent debris source
that appeared to peel off Discovery's external tank and pass harmlessly by the
orbiter during the launch, but mission managers said they had not seen the
video, and would not be able to comment until further study was performed.
"Our guys
are going to take a real serious look at the end-to-end footage," Griffin said.
"The guys are going to take a professional look at every frame of footage that
we have from every camera that we have...these are test flights right now,"
Griffin said. "The primary object under test is the external tank and all of
the design changes NASA made so that we would never have a repeat of
[STS]-107."
Meanwhile,
shuttle officials said radar tracking of Discovery's ascent showed no debris
shedding up until solid rocket booster separation, when a number of known
debris sources are created. An imaging experiment that used two high-altitude
WB-57 aircraft as imaging platforms for visible and infrared telescopes to
watch the launch also apparently performed far beyond expectations, and
apparently observed Discovery's ascent from liftoff through main engine
cut-off.
"Those will
be some views that we've never seen before," Hale said, adding that it will
still be at least another day until those images come in.
But despite
the technical achievements of Discovery's landmark shuttle flight, the launch's
emotional impact was not lost on the mission managers.
"I really
can't tell you what this means today," said a moved Bill Parsons, NASA's space
shuttle program manager, of the launch. "We've still got some work to do, then
we'll bring the crew home safely, then we'll fly another one."
The
follow-up to Discovery's return to flight mission, Atlantis' STS-121
spaceflight, is set to launch in September on a second shuttle test flight,
NASA officials said.
"There
will only be one more thing better than this launch," said NASA launch director Michael Leinbach during
the briefing. "And that will be landing in 12 days."
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