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NASA Managers Set to Approve Plan to Fly Atlantis in September
By Jim Banke
Senior Producer,
posted: 04:00 pm ET
01 August 2002
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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- NASA managers on Friday are expected to formally bless a plan that would lead to a repaired shuttle Atlantis launching in late September, followed by Endeavour in November and Columbia some time after that. "All of the rationale for flight was presented at a meeting on Wednesday and engineers have converged on the option to perform welding on Atlantis and Endeavour," NASA spokesman Rob Navias said Thursday. A final meeting planned for Friday will allow senior program officials to formally agree to a plan of action to repair the tiny cracks found in the main propulsion system plumbing of all four space shuttles. A news media briefing will follow the meeting. Work to repair Atlantis would begin next week, while repairs to Endeavour would follow once the work on Atlantis was complete and managers have decided if any changes to the procedures are necessary based on the experience gained, Navias said. As it stands now, the expected order of flights would have Atlantis launching first around Sept. 26 on a mission to install a new truss segment at the station. Endeavour would follow around Nov. 2 on a similar truss-delivery mission, but that flight also would feature a crew rotation. NASA officials might choose Sept. 28 as the launch date for Atlantis based on some work schedules, but for now the space agency still has the Eastern Range booked for Sept. 26, said Kennedy Space Center spokesman George Diller."We'll know more after the Mission Management Team meets on Friday," Diller said. Columbia's 16-day science research mission -- which includes Israel's first astronaut as a member of the crew -- would fly some time in December or possibly in January depending on how the rest of the launch schedule this year plays out. The tiny cracks were found on the surface of metal liners that are inside liquid hydrogen pipes located within each shuttle's rear engine compartment. The flaws are not within the Rocketdyne main engines themselves. The liners help direct the flow of propellant through the plumbing and past accordion-shaped bellows that give the plumbing needed flexibility for when the supercold fuel causes the pipes to shrink. The concern is that if the cracks were to grow during a launch and a piece of metal were to break free, the debris would be sent into the engine where it could cause a potentially catastrophic shutdown. Program managers say that after the repairs are made the parts will continue to be carefully inspected after each flight, and that engineers might consider redesigning the component in the future. At the same time, engineers are continuing to search for the reason why the cracks happened in the first place -- something that NASA may need several more weeks, if not months, to determine.
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