CAPE
CANAVERAL,
Fla. - NASA mission managers and
engineers began a two-day meeting at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) Friday to
give the space shuttle Discovery a last once-over in preparation for a planned
launch next month.
"There will
be literally hundreds of folks down here for this," KSC
spokesperson Bruce Buckingham said Thursday of the Flight Readiness
Review (FRR) underway here for NASA's STS-121
mission. "They're going to go through every aspect of the vehicle from the
time we last launched."
Buckingham
said the meeting - which will end with a press briefing on NASA
TV at no earlier than 2:00 p.m. EDT (1800 GMT) Saturday - also offers an
opportunity for shuttle managers and engineers to raise any final concerns or
questions over the planned STS-121 launch.
"This is another
opportunity for them to get another briefing and to readdress any issues they
might have in their minds, and for anybody else in the
room to stand up and say 'Hey I've got a problem or listen to this scenario,'"
Buckingham said. "There will be opportunities for folks to do that."
Discovery
last flew in July
2005 during the STS-114
mission, NASA's first shuttle test flight after the 2003 Columbia accident. The
orbiter now sits atop Launch Pad 39B, where shuttle workers are preparing it to
loft the STS-121 astronauts towards the International Space Station (ISS) no
earlier than July 1.
STS-121
commander Steven
Lindsey and his six crewmates trained inside the orbiter Thursday during a launch
dress rehearsal, and will return to NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston,
Texas later today. Lindsey has said he's confident
that shuttle managers will opt for a July 1 space shot, though there have been
discussions to delay the flight by a few days to secure optimum lighting for
photographs of Discovery's external tank once it's jettisoned after launch.
"I
personally wouldn't be surprised if we end up with something around July 1,"
Lindsey told reporters earlier this week.
Discovery
and its launch stack have gone through a series of modifications since the last
shuttle flight, the largest of which being the removal
of a nearly 34-pound (15-kilogram) ramp of foam insulation that screened
pressurization lines along Discovery's external tank hull.
A one-pound
(0.4-kilogram) piece of foam from a similar ramp, known as a protuberance
air load (PAL) ramp, fell from Discovery's external tank during the STS-114
launch but did not strike the orbiter. But the problem was a haunting reminder
of Columbia's final launch, in which a 1.67-pound (0.7-kilogram) chunk of foam
the size of a suitcase pierced the orbiter's heat shield during its liftoff and
led to its destruction upon reentry.
NASA space
shuttle program manager Wayne Hale has called the PAL ramp's removal the
largest aerodynamic change to the shuttle launch system since its first flight
25 years ago. Earlier this month, Hale said that after countless tests and
simulations, the external tank change has been rated "structurally
sound" for flight.
Many of the
issues to be discussed over the next two days will not be new to shuttle
managers, but they will conduct a final poll Saturday on whether to go ahead
with the launch.
"We expect
that that's going to be a go signal from everybody at the table," Buckingham
said.
STS-121
mission commander Steven Lindsey will speak briefly with the media live on NASA
TV at 10:30 a.m. EDT (1430 GMT) today.
NASA's
post-Flight Readiness Review press conference will also be broadcast on NASA
TV no earlier than 2:00 p.m. EDT (1800 GMT) Saturday.
You are
invited to follow along with the briefings using SPACE.com's
NASA
TV feed, which is available by clicking here.
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