The seven
NASA astronauts preparing to rocket toward the Hubble Space Telescope next
month aboard the shuttle Atlantis are a week behind in their training due to
the recent Hurricane Ike, making it difficult to keep to the planned Oct. 10
launch, the mission's commander said Tuesday.
Shuttle
commander Scott Altman told reporters at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape
Canaveral, Fla., that the effects of Ike at the agency's astronaut training
facility in Houston, Texas, have kept his crewmates from several vital training
runs for their mission
to overhaul Hubble.
"We did
miss seven days of training," Altman said from at Atlantis' seaside Pad 39A launch
site in a televised update. "It's hard to slice that out and stay on track, so
you come to the question of either slipping the launch or cutting out events
and we're still working with the whole system to balance that."
NASA
officials have said they are still maintaining the Oct. 10 launch target, with
top mission managers expected to review the impact from Ike and payload
delivery delays before setting an official launch target during a two-day Flight
Readiness Review next week.
NASA's astronaut
training center and Mission Control rooms for the shuttle and International Space
Station are based at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. The center reopened Monday,
11 days after NASA evacuated the facility on Sept. 11 ahead of Ike's arrival. The
storm caused minor roof damage to several JSC buildings and delayed the arrival
of a Russian cargo ship at the International Space Station.
But the closure
also kept Altman's STS-125 mission crew from a pair of intense
simulations and two spacewalk rehearsals in a massive pool at NASA's Neutral
Buoyancy Laboratory, where Hubble servicing astronauts have been practicing
some tricky repair tasks to revive two of space telescope's ailing instruments
that were never designed to be fixed in orbit.
"I'm hoping
we can get to make this up, I'd like another shot at them," said Atlantis
spacewalker Mike Massimino, who is making his second trip to Hubble on STS-125.
Joining
Altman and Massimino on the Hubble mission are Atlantis pilot Greg C. Johnson,
mission specialist Megan McArthur and spacewalkers John Grunsfeld, Mike Good
and Andrew Feustel. They are currently at NASA's Kennedy Space Center for
several days of preflight training, culminating in a launch day dress rehearsal
and emergency escape drill on Wednesday.
The astronauts
plan to perform five
back-to-back spacewalks during their planned 11-day mission to upgrade and
repair Hubble for the fifth and final time. The mission is expected to extend
Hubble's orbital life through 2013.
"In the
end, I think we're going to try to do most of our training and that may mean a
bit of a slip," Altman said. "But it's still being evaluated and we're standing
by."
Altman said
he and his crew flew over Atlantis and its nearby sister ship Endeavour perched
atop two different launch pads when they arrived at the Florida spaceport
earlier this week.
In
an unprecedented move, NASA is readying Endeavour and a skeleton crew of four
astronauts to perform a rescue mission in the unlikely event that Atlantis
suffers critical damage during the Hubble flight and is unable to return its
crew to Earth.
Astronauts
on recent shuttle flights to the International Space Station have had the option
of returning to that orbiting laboratory to await rescue, but Atlantis must fly
higher and in a different orbit to meet Hubble and would not have enough fuel
to reach the station, mission managers have said. So the agency is holding
Endeavour in reserve as a rescue ship to fly soon after any emergency declaration,
they added.
Shuttle astronauts
and mission managers alike have stressed that the scenario is extremely
unlikely.
"I am
confident we're not going to need it," Altman said, but added that he was
struck by the view of two shuttles atop their launch pads. "It's an amazing
sight."
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