 With its protective bricks torn away by the recent space shuttle launch, the flame trench at Launch Pad 39A will be given a new layer of protection in time for the next space shuttle liftoff.
The flame trench channels the flames and smoke exhaust of the shuttle's solid rocket boosters away from the launching spacecraft.
A swath of about 5,300 protective bricks tore away from the walls of the structure when space shuttle Discovery lifted off May 31 to begin its STS-124 mission. None of the bricks bounced back in the area of the shuttle. Computer models of the exhaust pattern suggest no likelihood of loose bricks coming back to the mobile launcher platform or the shuttle.
Just as a swimming pool is coated with a protective layer before it is soaked, the flame trench will be sprayed with fire-resistant concrete to shield it from fire and smoke.
Managers have not decided which material to use, but there are sections of the flame trench already protected by a spray-on concrete surface. A shuttle program meeting June 26 should solidify many of the details of the repairs.
Atlantis is targeted to lift off from pad 39A Oct. 8 on the STS-125 mission to service NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope.
"We are very confident we will get it fixed before (the) Hubble mission," said Ed Mango, deputy director of the shuttle's launch processing team and the launch director for STS-125.
The damaged portion of the flame trench directs exhaust from the space shuttle's solid rocket boosters. Another part of the trench deflects the exhaust from the shuttle's three main engines.
The bricks protect the reinforced concrete structure of the launch pad from the pressure of about seven million pounds of thrust and temperatures reaching 3,600 degrees.
NASA's Perry Becker, who is leading the engineer investigation and repair effort, said it is too early to tell why the wall came apart during liftoff. The wall was built in 1965 and has endured 82 launches, including 12 liftoffs of the Saturn V rocket.
Each of the bricks weighs about nine pounds and they are designed with tongues and grooves to interconnect with each other. The force of the shuttle's solid rocket boosters carried some of the bricks more than 1,800 feet from the launch pad.
The engineers will also decide how much of the wall, if any, needs to be taken down to prevent future damage.
Becker said the walls are inspected after each launch. The only similar damage came during a launch in the mid-1980s when about 800 bricks were stripped off the floor of the flame trench on Launch Pad 39B.
"Historically, we've not had this kind of damage to repair," Becker said.
The flame trench at pad B also is being tested for signs of weakness. That pad, which is a twin of the other launch pad, will be used in case a space shuttle has to be launched to aid the STS-125 crew.
Mango said he has no doubt both pads will be ready for the October mission.
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 After a wait of more than two decades, "hope" arrived at the International Space Station on June 3, 2008, just three days into space shuttle Discovery's STS-124 mission.
Using the space station's robotic arm, Mission Specialists Akihiko Hoshide and Karen Nyberg slowly and carefully maneuvered the 32,500-pound Japanese Pressurized Module out of Discovery's payload bay. More than two hours later, as Earth rolled by below, Hoshide installed it on the left side of the station's Harmony node.
"We have a new hope on the International Space Station," said Hoshide, who represents the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.
The Pressurized Module is the largest piece of hardware in the Japanese Experiment Module known as "Kibo," or hope. After 23 years in the making, Japan's contribution to the International Space Station is finally taking shape in orbit.
Discovery's STS-124 mission was the second of three shuttle flights required to deliver the entire Kibo complex to the station.
Commanded by astronaut Mark Kelly, the seven-member crew started the two-week mission May 31 with a spectacular late-afternoon liftoff from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Discovery roared toward orbit at 5:02 p.m. EDT and started its two-day orbital pursuit of the space station.
On June 2, with Pilot Ken Ham at the controls, the orbiter linked up with the space station as the two spacecraft flew above the South Pacific. Later that afternoon, astronaut Greg Chamitoff took the place of ISS Flight Engineer Garrett Reisman, who had served three months aboard the station.
Mission Specialists Mike Fossum and Ron Garan conducted the mission's first spacewalk the next day, which marked the 43rd anniversary of astronaut Ed White's first U.S. spacewalk. During their six-and-a-half-hour excursion, the spacewalkers prepared the laboratory module for installation. They also cleaned and inspected the station's starboard Solar Alpha Rotary Joint, one of two such joints which help the power-generating solar arrays follow the sun.
The Japanese Pressurized Module was officially open for science the following day.
"It has been 20-plus years to get this module up in space," Hoshide said when he unlocked the laboratory's hatch. "It looks empty, but it's filled with dreams."
Earlier that morning, space station astronauts successfully repaired the toilet system in the station's service module by replacing a pump carried to orbit aboard Discovery.
 The fast pace of the mission continued on the sixth flight day with another spacewalk performed by Fossum and Garan. Among the many assignments completed during their seven-hour spacewalk, the two astronauts outfitted the Pressurized Module with a pair of television cameras. At the end of the excursion, Fossum inspected the port Solar Alpha Rotary Joint.
Flight day seven was another busy day for the joined shuttle and station crews. Nyberg and Chamitoff used the space station's robotic arm to remove Kibo's 9,500-pound logistics module, which was delivered to the station on the STS-123 mission, from its temporary home atop the Harmony node to its permanent home on top of the Pressurized Module.
The Japanese robotic arm, which Discovery also brought to the station on this flight, was put through its first workout the following day. The arm's end effector pitched down slightly, enough to confirm the arm was working properly and leave room for Fossum and Garan to complete work on it during the mission's final spacewalk on flight day nine.
During that six-and-a-half-hour trek on June 8, Fossum and Garan accomplished everything on their to-do list as well as some "get-ahead" tasks. They exchanged a depleted nitrogen tank assembly for a new one, removed thermal covers and launch locks from the newly delivered Kibo hardware and reinstalled a repaired television camera onto the station's left P1 truss. Fossum also retrieved samples of a dust-like substance from the left Solar Alpha Rotary Joint for analysis by experts on the ground.
Crew members from space shuttle Discovery and the International Space Station said goodbye and closed their respective hatches on June 10, ending the docked portion of the STS-124 mission.
The next morning, Discovery undocked from the station at 7:42 a.m. EDT and Ham guided the shuttle through the traditional "fly-around" before finally separating from the orbiting outpost. A final inspection of the orbiter's heat shield rounded out the day's work.
Discovery's mission concluded June 14 with a picture-perfect landing on Kennedy's Runway 15, gliding to a touchdown right on time at 11:15 p.m. EDT.
"It's great to be here on the runway in sunny Florida and to bring Discovery back in really good shape," Kelly said before the astronauts departed the runway. "We installed a Japanese lab that will allow a lot more science on the station, we did three spacewalks, and we exchanged the crew of the space station. It was really an exciting mission."
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 The first educator mission specialist, Barbara R. Morgan, plans to leave NASA to join Boise State University in August. She will serve as the distinguished educator in residence, providing vision and leadership to the state of Idaho on science, technology, engineering and math education.
Morgan flew aboard space shuttle Endeavour for the STS-118 mission to the International Space Station in August 2007. She was responsible for the 5,000 pounds of supplies and equipment that was transferred between the shuttle and station. She also operated the space shuttle and station robotic arms during spacewalk and hardware installation tasks.
She served as the backup to payload specialist Christa McAuliffe in the Teacher in Space Project. McAuliffe and six fellow astronauts lost their lives in the Challenger accident on Jan. 28, 1986. Morgan, who was an elementary school teacher in McCall, Idaho, before being selected as McAuliffe's backup, returned to teaching after the accident. She was selected to train as a mission specialist in 1998 and was named to the STS-118 crew in 2002.
Three other educator mission specialists, Richard Arnold, Joseph Acaba and Dottie Metcalf-Lindenburger, are training for future spaceflights. Arnold and Acaba are assigned to fly on the STS-119 space shuttle mission to the station next year.
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 NASA has awarded a contract to Oceaneering International Inc. of Houston, for the design, development and production of a new spacesuit system. The spacesuit will protect astronauts during Constellation Program voyages to the International Space Station and, by 2020, the surface of the moon.
The subcontractors to Oceaneering are Air-Lock Inc. of Milford, Conn., David Clark Co. of Worcester, Mass., Cimarron Software Services Inc. of Houston, Harris Corporation of Palm Bay, Fla., Honeywell International Inc. of Glendale, Ariz., Paragon Space Development Corp. of Tucson, Ariz., and United Space Alliance of Houston.
"The award of the spacesuit contract completes the spaceflight hardware requirements for the Constellation Program's first human flight in 2015," said Jeff Hanley, Constellation program manager at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. Contracts for the Orion crew capsule and the Ares I rocket were awarded during the past two years.
The cost-plus-award-fee spacesuit contract includes a basic performance period from June 2008 to September 2014 that has a value of $183.8 million. During the performance period, Oceaneering and its subcontractors will conduct design, development, test, and evaluation work culminating in the manufacture, assembly, and first flight of the suit components needed for astronauts aboard the Orion crew exploration vehicle. The basic contract also includes initial work on the suit design needed for the lunar surface.
"I am excited about the new partnership between NASA and Oceaneering," said Glenn Lutz, project manager for the spacesuit system at Johnson. "Now it is time for our spacesuit team to begin the journey together that ultimately will put new sets of boot prints on the moon."
Suits and support systems will be needed for as many as four astronauts on moon voyages and as many as six space station travelers. For short trips to the moon, the suit design will support a week's worth of moon walks. The system also must be designed to support a significant number of moon walks during potential six-month lunar outpost expeditions. In addition, the spacesuit and support systems will provide contingency spacewalk capability and protection against the launch and landing environment, such as spacecraft cabin leaks.
Two contract options may be awarded in the future as part of this contract. Option 1 covers completion of design, development, test and evaluation for the moon surface suit components. Option 1 would begin in October 2010 and run through September 2018, under a cost-plus-award fee structure with a total value of $302.1 million.
Option 2 provides for the Orion suit production, processing and sustaining engineering under a cost-plus-award fee or a firm-fixed-price, indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contract structure with a maximum value of $260 million depending on hardware requirements. Option 2 would begin at the end of the basic performance period in October 2014, and would continue through September 2018.
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Last week, space shuttle Discovery touched down after a historic mission to the International Space Station, a flight that not only launched the largest laboratory to date, but also the 50th female U.S. astronaut. Just eight weeks prior, astronaut Peggy Whitson returned to Earth after a six-month stay in orbit as the first female space station commander. Women have established their place in space, but it was the flight of Sally Ride 25 years ago that paved the road to the stars.
Ride was a mission specialist on STS-7, launched June 18, 1983. The mission deployed two communications satellites and collected research on a number of scientific experiments.
The fact that I was going to be the first American woman to go into space carried huge expectations along with it,” said Ride. “And that was made pretty clear the day that I was told I was selected as a crew. I was taken up to Chris Kraft’s office. He wanted to have a chat with me and make sure I knew what I was getting into before I made sure I went on the crew. I was so dazzled to be on the crew and go into space I remembered very little of what he said.
Ride joined NASA as part of the 1978 astronaut class, the first class to include women. Ride and five other women were selected out of 8,000 applicants, 1,500 of which were female. Twenty-nine men also were selected. The class became known as the “Thirty-Five New Guys” and reported to the Johnson Space Center the next summer to begin training. Ride would train for five years before she and three of her classmates were assigned to STS-7.
 On launch day, there was so much excitement and so much happening around us in crew quarters, even on the way to the launch pad, going up the launch pad,” Ride said. “I didn’t really think about it that much at the time… but I came to appreciate what an honor it was to be selected to be the first woman to get a chance to go into space.
Following that historic flight, Ride flew on another space shuttle mission, STS-41G in 1984. She was assigned to a third mission, but transitioned to a role on the Challenger accident investigation panel in January 1986. Once the investigation was completed, she served as a special assistant to the NASA administrator.
Since then, Ride has returned to academia and her passion for inspiring young people. She has authored numerous books and founded Sally Ride Science, a company dedicated to supporting students and their interest in math and science.
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Space shuttle Discovery and its crew landed at 11:15 a.m. EDT Saturday, at NASA's Kennedy Space Center, Fla., completing a 14-day journey of more than 5.7 million miles in space.
The STS-124 mission was the second of three flights to launch components to the International Space Station to complete the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's Kibo laboratory. Discovery delivered Kibo's tour bus-sized Japanese Pressurized Module, or JPM, which is the station's largest module. The mission included three spacewalks to install and outfit the JPM and activate its robotic arm system. The lab's logistics module, which was delivered and installed in a temporary location in March, was attached to its permanent position on top of the JPM.
Mark Kelly commanded the flight and was joined by Pilot Ken Ham, Mission Specialists Karen Nyberg, Ron Garan, Mike Fossum, Greg Chamitoff, and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Akihiko Hoshide. Chamitoff remained aboard the space station, replacing Expedition 17 Flight Engineer Garrett Reisman, who returned to Earth on Discovery after nearly three months on the station. Chamitoff will return on shuttle Endeavour's STS-126 mission, targeted for launch November 10.
STS-124 was the 123rd space shuttle flight, the 35th flight for shuttle Discovery and the 26th flight of a shuttle to the station.
With Discovery and its crew safely home, the stage is set for the launch of STS-125 on October 8. Atlantis' mission will return the space shuttle to the Hubble Space Telescope for one last visit before the shuttle fleet retires in 2010. Over 12 days and five spacewalks, Atlantis' crew will make repairs and upgrades to the telescope, preparing it for at least another five years of research.
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Engineers operating the Robotic Arm on NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander are testing a revised method for delivering soil samples to laboratory instruments on Phoenix's deck now that researchers appreciate how clumpy the soil is at the landing site.
"We're a little surprised at how much this material is clumping together when we dig into it," said Doug Ming a Phoenix science team member from NASA's Johnson Space Center, Houston.
The soil's physical properties are proving to be a challenge for getting a sample intended for one instrument to pass through a screen over a delivery opening. The instrument is the Thermal and Evolved-Gas Anaylzer, or TEGA, designed to bake and sniff samples to identify some key ingredients. The analyzer vibrated the screen for 20 minutes on Sunday but detected only a few particles getting through the screen, not enough to fill the tiny oven below.
"We are going to try vibrating it one more time, and if that doesn't work, it is likely we will use our new, revised delivery method on another thermal analyzer cell," said William Boynton of the University of Arizona, lead scientist for the instrument.
The arm delivered the first sample to TEGA on Friday by turning the scoop over to release its contents. The revised delivery method, which Phoenix is testing for the first time today, will hold the scoop at an angle above the delivery target and sprinkle out a small amount of the sample by vibrating the scoop. The vibration comes from running a motorized rasp on the bottom of the scoop.
Phoenix used the arm Sunday to collect a soil sample for the spacecraft Optical Microscope. Today's plans include a practice of the sprinkle technique, using a small amount of soil from the sample collected Sunday. If that goes well, the Phoenix team assembled at the University of Arizona plans to sprinkle material from the same scoopful onto the microscope later this week.
The Phoenix mission is led by Peter Smith at the University of Arizona with project management at JPL and development partnership at Lockheed Martin, Denver. International contributions come from the Canadian Space Agency; the University of Neuchatel, Switzerland; the universities of Copenhagen and Aarhus, Denmark; Max Planck Institute, Germany; and the Finnish Meteorological Institute.
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The technical marvel that is the space shuttle system does not stop with the spacecraft.
The spacesuits the astronauts wear during launch and landing are examples of high-tech clothing designed to hold communications equipment, oxygen tanks, parachutes and enough water for a day. All while keeping the wearer cool.
You won't see a bulky pressure suit weighing 91 pounds and painted orange on the fashion runways of Paris, but they are an essential element of any astronaut's wardrobe.
No one goes into space aboard a shuttle without one because it could be the key to keeping an astronaut safe in case something goes wrong.
And, according to Shuttle crew escape subsystem manager K.C. Chhipwadia, that's really the whole point.
"It's not really designed to walk around and move like a (spacewalking suit) is, it's really to stay seated and stay alive," Chhipwadia said.
That means it can take as long as 30 minutes to get inside one.
That's because the ensemble is several layers of thin clothing, not one big suit an astronaut climbs into and zips up. The orange part that everyone sees as the astronauts walk out to the Astrovan on their way to the launch pad is simply the top layer.
The astronaut starts with lightweight shirts and shorts and then puts on a shirt and pants that look like thermal underwear with an extensive network of tubes woven into them.
Water pumps through the tubes during the countdown to keep the astronaut cool. A set of plugs folded into a pocket on the outside of the suit connect to fittings inside the shuttle to move the water through the suit.
Then comes the orange outer layer, which actually is two layers on its own. The inner layer is a rubber-like material similar to a wetsuit. Chhipwadia describes it as the balloon part of the suit because it is what holds the air if the suit has to inflate. The outer part of the suit is a flame-resistant Nomex material that is much stronger than the inner layer and gives the suit its shape.
With the helmet, visor and gloves locked in place, the suit fully encloses the astronaut in an air bubble inflated to 3.5 pounds, about the same air pressure as a person would find 30,000 feet above Earth. That is slightly lower than the cruising altitude of many airliners.
That air pressure was chosen because the bailout scenarios for an astronaut in the unlikely event of an emergency call for the crew to evacuate the spacecraft at 30,000 feet, Chhipwadia said.
Once an astronaut gets out of a crippled shuttle, the suit is designed to act largely automatically.
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The winners of NASA's 50th Anniversary Essay Competition have been selected.
The international competition challenged middle school and junior high students to discuss, in an essay of 500 words or less, one of two topics: how they have benefitted in their everyday lives from aerospace technologies built by NASA during the past 50 years, or, how their lives may be different 50 years in the future because of NASA technology.
Jackson Warley of the Renaissance Academy in Colorado Springs, Colo., took first prize. The seventh grader will receive a $5,000 college scholarship and a trip to view a international space station shuttle launch at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. In his essay, Jackson wrote “the underlying spirit and principles of NASA . . . heeds the basic human calling to explore the unknown and in doing so, gives people motivation."
Second prize and a $2,500 college scholarship went to Grace Nowadly, a student at Berkeley Middle School in Williamsburg, Va. Megha Subramanian of Hershey Middle School in Hershey, Pa., won third prize and a $1,000 college scholarship.
"NASA is proud to recognize the winners of the 50th anniversary essay competition. This competition has generated excitement among the participating students as they learned about how America's space program impacts their lives in very powerful ways," NASA Deputy Administrator Shana Dale said. "The goal is to spark students' imagination in science, math, and engineering and I think we've achieved that goal with these exceptional students."
More than 1,000 submissions from 37 states and 15 countries were entered into the competition. NASA's Innovative Partnerships Program and NASA's Office of Education conducted the competition.
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NASA has set June 7 as the new target launch date for the Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope, or GLAST, from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The launch window extends from 11:45 a.m. to 1:40 p.m. EDT and remains unchanged through Aug. 7.
NASA had targeted June 5 for the GLAST launch aboard a Delta II rocket. Additional time was necessary for the Delta II launch team to assure that open engineering issues, which have been under review, are satisfactorily resolved.
The GLAST prelaunch news conference is planned for 1 p.m. on Thursday, June 5, at NASA's Kennedy Space Center News Center. Question and answer capability will be available from participating NASA locations.
The placement of remote cameras at Pad 17-B is planned for 1 p.m. on Friday, June 6. On launch day, news media should meet at 10:30 a.m. at the Space Florida parking lot outside Gate 1 of Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.
Launch commentary on NASA Television's Media Channel 103 will begin at 9:45 a.m. on June 7.
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future damage.
entire Kibo complex to the station.
The fast pace of the mission continued on the sixth flight day with another spacewalk performed by Fossum and Garan. Among the many assignments completed during their seven-hour spacewalk, the two astronauts outfitted the Pressurized Module with a pair of television cameras. At the end of the excursion, Fossum inspected the port Solar Alpha Rotary Joint.
shuttle through the traditional "fly-around" before finally separating from the orbiting outpost. A final inspection of the orbiter's heat shield rounded out the day's work.
