HOUSTON--NASA's next space shuttle flight
will not launch before Sept. 22 as engineers struggle to understand and fix
foam debris issues with the launch system's external tank, agency officials
said Friday.
NASA had
targeted Sept. 9 to launch the Atlantis orbiter on its STS-121 spaceflight, a
second test flight of fixes made in response to the 2003 Columbia disaster. But the external tank foam
shedding observed in the launch of the agency's current shuttle
mission--STS-114 aboard Discovery set to undock from the International Space
Station (ISS)--and other mission processing activities have eroded away at that
flight window, which closes on Sept. 26, NASA officials said.
"Until
we run out of lead time to make the September window, then we'll preserve it,"
NASA chief Michael Griffin told reporters during a roundtable discussion here
at Johnson Space Center.
"If next week, the guys have a "eureka" moment on the foam and say 'yes, we
understand it'...then we'll go forward."
Griffin has
set up what he called a 'tiger team' of engineers to investigate the foam loss
problem, which is expected to report to ISS program manager William Gerstenmaier next week on their initial fact-finding
efforts at the agency's New Orleans, Louisiana-based Michoud
Assembly Facility where the tanks are constructed.
Gerstenmaier said he had not reviewed a 2004 internal NASA memo, first reported
Wednesday by the New York Times, criticizing quality control some foam
application techniques. The report cited that engineers "did not do a thorough
job" of tracking the minute variations in hand-applied foam, the Times
reported.
"It's
available I'm sure in all the other documentation that the teams are looking
at," Gerstenmaier said. "We'll take that information
and see if there are some things there, again from a technology standpoint or
from an engineering standpoint that we can use and apply."
During
Discovery's July 26 launch, video from a camera mounted to its external tank
recorded several pieces of foam insulation peel away during the ascent. A
large, 0.9-pound chunk visibly popped free from a ramp previously thought safe
from foam shedding. That chunk did not strike the orbiter, but at least three
other foam pieces that also separated during the launch and were too large to
be considered acceptable, shuttle officials have said.
The foam
debris from Discovery's external tank disappointed shuttle engineers and
Discovery's astronaut crew, given that NASA has spent two and a half years and
about $200 million of the $1.4 billion devoted to its post-Columbia accident
work toward revamping orbiter external tanks to prevent harmful foam shedding.
Shuttle officials said they will not launch another shuttle until they
understand and address the foam issue.
A
1.67-pound of foam fell from Columbia's
external tank during its launch and pierced the heat shield panel lining its
left wing leading edge. That wing damaged allowed hot atmospheric gases to
enter the wing during reentry on Feb. 1, 2003, leading to Columbia's destruction and the deaths of all
seven astronauts onboard, investigators found.
Gerstenmaier said that all of the imagery collected of Discovery's launch and
subsequent orbital inspections has given engineers a wealth of data that they
can put toward
"We learned
a lot from this flight," Gerstenmaier said. "The next
step...is to look at the future tanks that are coming and see if there any
applications from what we learned."
Only then
will engineers decide whether to modify the external tank for Atlantis, which
stands mated to its external tank-solid rocket booster launch stack in the
massive Vehicle Assembly
Building at Kennedy Space
Center, or shift the
orbiter to a complete new tank, Gerstenmaier added.
While the Sept. 22 launch date for Atlantis shaves about two
weeks from its flight window, there are still multiple opportunities to launch
the shuttle within the narrow flight window.
"It's still
gives us four launch attempts toward the end of the window, and still looks
good from a planning standpoint," Gerstenmaier said.
Meanwhile, Discovery's STS-114 mission nearing its completion. The astronauts have completed their
resupply mission at the ISS and are poised to undock
from the station at 3:22 a.m. EDT (0422 GMT) Saturday.
Discovery
is expected to land at NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) at 4:46 a.m. EDT (0846
GMT) on Aug. 8.
advertisement
