As NASA
celebrated the 25th
anniversary of its first shuttle flight Wednesday, the commander of the
space agency's next orbiter to fly said he is confident his crew will launch in
July.
Veteran
shuttle astronaut Steven
Lindsey, commander of the STS-121
spaceflight aboard the Discovery orbiter, told reporters that while more
external tank testing is still needed, he remains optimistic that his mission
will fly this summer.
"We're
doing some wind tunnel testing and we've done some redesign of the tank,"
Lindsey said in video interviews. "I'm pretty optimistic that we're going to
make July."
Second
test flight
NASA's
STS-121 mission is the agency's second test flight following the 2003 loss of Columbia and its
seven-astronaut crew.
NASA
launched its Discovery orbiter on the STS-114 return to flight mission
in July 2005, but later delayed the STS-121 spaceflight pending debris
concerns over loose chunks of shuttle fuel tank foam seen in that ascent. A
similar foam-shedding problem doomed Columbia's 2003 STS-107
mission when a piece of loose foam punched through the orbiter's heat
shield at launch, leaving it vulnerable to the high temperatures of reentry.
NASA has
since opted to remove
a protective foam ramp - which shed the large foam pieces in the STS-114 launch
- from shuttle fuel tanks, though additional wind tests are required to ensure
the fix won't compromise tank integrity during flight.
"We obviously
will not launch until all those issues are resolved," Lindsey said. "But I'm
confident that we're getting there. Eventually we just have to go fly and test
it to see if it works. It's a flight test mission."
From a
training perspective, Lindsey's STS-121 crew is just about ready for flight,
the shuttle commander said.
NASA plans
to launch Discovery's STS-121 mission between July 1 and July 19 on a 13-day
flight to the International Space Station (ISS).
In addition
to testing shuttle repair and flight safety methods, the crew is expected to
perform three spacewalks and deliver European Space Agency astronaut Thomas
Reiter to the ISS as the outpost's third crewmember. The space station's current two-astronaut Expedition 13 crew arrived on April 1.
If all goes
well, two additional shuttle crews could launch toward the space station in
August and December, NASA has said.
Shuttle
at 25
Despite the
shuttle program's extended downtime and flight delays since the Columbia
accident and, more recently, the STS-114 mission, Lindsey maintains a deep
affection for NASA's space shuttles.
"Even now,
25 years later as I'm flying it, I'm still amazed," Lindsey said, adding that
he was a college junior at the U.S. Air Force Academy when Columbia launched
its first flight on April 12, 1981. "We can do just about anything you can
imagine with the shuttle."
A veteran
of three shuttle flights, Lindsey first mission was 1997's STS-87 spaceflight
aboard Columbia.
Lindsey
said he'll be sad to see NASA retire
its three remaining orbiters - Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour - in 2010 to
make way for its capsule-based Crew Exploration
Vehicle, but that he doesn't believe the concept of a reusable winged
spacecraft is gone for good.
"I think we
will see a shuttle-type vehicle in the future, but not in the near future,"
Lindsey said. "I think the concept is still good, but this technology needs to
advance just a little bit more before we do this a little more routinely."
advertisement
