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Shuttle launches despite bad weather
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida: The shuttle Discovery roared off the ground Tuesday, even though poor weather had threatened to keep it on the ground.
The weather and other issues were resolved and shuttle was launched as scheduled at 11:38 a.m. for a mission that will involve challenging construction work aboard the $100 billion International Space Station, including the attachment of a new module that will expand the living space in the orbiting laboratory.
George Diller, the launch commentator, announced at 11:20 that the ice problem "has been cleared" because a problem with ice that had formed toward the base of the shuttle's orange external tank, after analysis, was determined to not be a threat to the vehicle and was melting in any case. "At this point, all appears to be 'go,' " he said.
NASA weather officials also decided that weather conditions would permit launch.
A shuttle cannot be launched in rain because of lightning concerns, and visibility must be good enough for the craft to be able to return to the landing strip in case its flight must be aborted early in the ascent. So local weather conditions are watched closely.
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After breakfast the crew walked out to the silver "Astro van" at 7:45 a.m. to be taken to the shuttle and strapped in for the flight.
As the crew was being sealed inside the shuttle just before 10 a.m., NASA inspection teams prepared to take a closer look at the four-inch-by-one-inch piece of ice on a line that feeds liquid hydrogen to the shuttle's main engines. Falling ice and falling insulating foam debris can be hazardous to the delicate leading thermal tiles and panels that protect the shuttle from the heat of reentry. The piece will be analyzed to see if its position and density pose a threat to shuttle tiles.
The commander for the mission is Colonel Pam Melroy, who is a retired from the Air Force, and the pilot is Colonel George Zamka of the Marine Corps. The other astronauts are Scott Parazynski, Stephanie Wilson, Colonel Doug Wheelock of the army, and Paolo Nespoli, an Italian representing the European Space Agency. A seventh astronaut, Daniel Tani, will be on board to take his place aboard the space station with its commander, Peggy Whitson, and Yuri Malenchenko, a Russian flight engineer. The crew will bring back Clayton Anderson, who has served aboard the station since June. By coincidence, it will be the first time that there will be two female commanders in space.
In the weeks before the mission, safety concerns were raised by engineers at NASA's engineering and safety center, which argued that this launching should wait until December so that at least three heat-resistant panels on the wings' leading edge can be replaced. The center was created after the loss of the shuttle Columbia and its crew in 2003 to act as a technical backstop on safety issues, which had been played down by mission managers before and during Columbia's last flight.
In the case of Discovery, testing showed a surprising amount of decay in the coating on the leading-edge panels, which must protect the craft from 3000-degree heat during reentry. The deterioration of the coatings led the safety engineers to argue that they do not fully understand the process or rate of deterioration, and should replace suspect panels to be as safe as possible.
Mission managers voted to go forward with the launch, while pledging to study the problem further. There was no evidence that the damage might accelerate, though the managers did acknowledge that in the worst case, a burned-through panel, and even the loss of a shuttle and crew, was possible. But any such damage could be detected during the on-orbit inspection that is now a part of every flight and could be repaired successfully with newly developed techniques and materials, mission managers said.
There were no official dissents entered against the decision to launch the mission, but the agency's chief engineer wrote his concerns into the record. The NASA engineering and safety center, which does not have a vote in the matter, did not change its recommendation against the launching. On Friday, when the crew arrived at Kennedy Space Center, Melroy, said she and the crew were comfortable with the decision to go ahead with the launching. She noted that discussions of the leading-edge panel problem went on for 12 hours, and said, "I feel very confident that everybody's voice was heard." She and the rest of the crew, she said, were "totally confident" that the heat shield on Discovery "is ready to protect us on our ride home."
