STS-118 Endeavour

cIclops · 2007-07-05 04:37:42

From left to right: mission specialists Richard A. (Rick)
Mastracchio, Barbara R. Morgan, Pilot Charles O. Hobaugh,
Commander Scott J. Kelly and mission specialists Tracy E. Caldwell,
Canadian Space Agency's Dafydd R. (Dave) Williams, and Alvin Drew Jr.

Mission Overview

But this mission also will see a two decade-old dream realized and a vision of inspiration completed. Twenty-two years after first being selected as Christa McAuliffe’s backup in the Teacher in Space Project, Barbara Morgan will strap into space shuttle Endeavour as a fully-trained astronaut.

The little bit of assembly – as in assembly of the International Space Station – refers to the next segment that will be attached to the right side of the station's backbone, or truss. The new segment, known as the S5, is relatively small and weighs about 5,000 pounds. The piece provides clearance between sets of solar arrays on the truss structure.
“I think right now the manifest has us bringing up about 5,000 pounds and then bringing down about 5,000 pounds,” Kelly said. “So it’s a lot of spare parts, food, clothing, scientific experiments. We’ll unload that and then reload it with stuff that needs to come home – garbage, spare parts that are no longer needed on the station.”
Then there’s the repair work, which Lead Station Flight Director Joel Montalbano expects to be one of the most difficult parts of the mission. One of the station’s control moment gyroscopes – a spinning wheel used to control the space station’s orientation – experienced problems and was shut down in October. Program managers determined that it needed to be replaced during STS-118.

cIclops · 2007-07-06 01:38:32

Endeavour moving from the Orbiter Processing Facility (OPF) to the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) (YouTube video 5:38 mins) - 2 Jul 2007

While in the OPF, Endeavour has had extensive modifications for improved safety and a new system to transfer power from ISS while docked.

Cargo being loaded into the payload transportation canister (YouTube Video 9:15 mins)

Video shows the loading of the payload cannister with the external stowage platform carrying spare parts and the replacement control moment gyroscope (CMG), next the S5 integrated truss segment, and finally the pressurized Spacehab single cargo carrier filled with supplies and equipment.

cIclops · 2007-07-09 13:17:54

Payload canister is lifted off its transporter up to the payload changeout room - imaged 8 Jul 2007

cIclops · 2007-07-10 15:35:40

Briefings - (video zip file, beware 459MB!)

zip file contains:

Program overview briefing - 10 Jul 2007 (video 62:50 mins) - STS and ISS deputy program managers

Mission overview briefing - 10 Jul 2007 (video 71:45 mins) - STS and ISS Flight directors and the STS package manager

EVA overview - 10 Jul 2007 (video 45:39 mins) - Lead spacewalk officer

cIclops · 2007-07-11 09:19:51

On launch pad 39A and ready for prelaunch processing - imaged 11 Jul 2007

more images - also high rez ones

cIclops · 2007-07-16 15:21:34

Orbiter docking system transfered into the Shuttle payload bay on pad 39A - imaged 15 Jul 2007

cIclops · 2007-07-21 10:46:40

Press kit (10MB PDF)

Lots of information about the mission: crew, priorities, timeline, payload, spacewalks, shuttle data etc etc

cIclops · 2007-07-26 13:45:19

Endeavour is "Go" for Launch

Launch Date: Aug. 7
Launch Time: 7:02 p.m. EDT

NASA 07.26.07 - 3:20 p.m.
Space Shuttle Endeavour is ready to fly, NASA managers concluded today after wrapping up the two-day flight readiness review at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Launch of Endeavour on the STS-118 mission is officially set for Aug. 7.
"On behalf of all the people that work on Endeavour, both here and really across the country, it's a great, great feeling to have Endeavour back on the pad," said Shuttle Launch Director Mike Leinbach. "We're looking forward to a great launch."
The Shuttle Mission Management Team conducts the review two weeks prior to each space shuttle mission. The group thoroughly evaluates all activities and elements necessary for the safe and successful performance of shuttle mission operations -- from the prelaunch phase through post-landing -- including the readiness of the vehicle, flight crew and payloads.

SpaceNut · 2007-07-26 20:26:14

http://www.spacetoday.net/

Endeavour cleared for launch despite computer sabotage

while revealing that a computer the shuttle will carry to the station was apparently sabotaged by a worker.
Officials also revealed Thursday afternoon that wires in a data relay box being carried to the station were cut, apparently in an act of sabotage by a worker at a contractor.

Wow Now the contractors are getting to be to much ....l

cIclops · 2007-07-27 04:12:54

Imaged 20 Jul 2007 inside the payload bay from bow to stern:
ODS, SPACEHAB module, S5 truss and ESP3 holding the ball shaped CMG and other spares

SpaceNut · 2007-07-31 20:59:32

Gee what else can go amiss... previously passed test

Shuttle Endeavour cabin leak being investigated

On Saturday, engineers carried out a standard crew module-airlock leak test and were surprised to note a pressure decay rate of 0.06 pounds per square inch in one hour. The allowable limit is 0.022 psi over four hours

cIclops · 2007-08-04 12:52:36

Mission Postponed 24 Hours - 3 Aug 2007

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - The launch of space shuttle Endeavour on mission STS-118 has been postponed 24 hours to allow the shuttle processing team additional time to complete routine work before liftoff. The launch now is targeted for Wednesday, Aug. 8, at 6:36 p.m. EDT from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The additional day will provide time to complete the processing and allow the countdown to begin at 8 p.m. Sunday. As originally planned, the STS-118 crew will arrive at Kennedy at 5 p.m. Friday.

cIclops · 2007-08-07 01:25:47

Latest NASA news - 6 Aug 2007 4:30 p.m. EDT

Launch Date: Aug. 8
Launch Time: 6:36 p.m. EDT
Space Shuttle Endeavour is in good shape and on target for launch Wednesday, according to members of NASA's Mission Management Team. Members of the team, known as the MMT, met Monday to review the launch status, and confirmed that the countdown is proceeding right on schedule.
"I'm very proud of the team for overcoming all the difficulties in the countdown and the preparation for flight so far," said Wayne Hale, Space Shuttle Program manager. "The flight crew is down here well-trained and ready to go fly, and based on the review that we had today, we're ready to go fly in two days."
Weather is not expected to stand in the way of a Wednesday evening liftoff. Currently, there's only a 30% chance that isolated showers or anvil clouds could prevent launch. This prediction remains the same in the event of a 24-hour delay.
The countdown began on time at 8 p.m. EDT Sunday. Late Monday night, workers will load propellants into the onboard reactant tanks for the shuttle's three fuel cells. When that operation is complete early Wednesday morning, the pad will be reopened for initial pad closeouts and checks of the orbiter's three main engines.

SpaceNut · 2007-08-07 22:30:15

Shuttle Endeavour's Cargo: Of Mice and Mass plus teacher-turned-astronaut Barbara Morgan.

The shuttle's tiniest spaceflyers are split into groups of eight rodents each and stashed away in three separate middeck lockers to make up the Commercial Biomedical Test Module-2.
Plant growth experiment hardware like that shown here will be used by NASA educator astroanut Barbara Morgan during the August 2007 STS-118 mission to the ISS.

NASA Develops Wireless Tile Scanner for Space Shuttle Inspection

SpaceNut · 2007-08-08 11:00:14

After unprecedented 4½ years, Endeavour returns

Endeavour Rolls Out after 200 upgrades it was last launched back in Novemeber of 2002.

Modifications
Parts Delivered 1.66 Million
Checks on flight hardware 13,256
Gap fillers replaced 3,223
Thermal tiles replaced 2,045
Day spent in the Hanger 1,665

SpaceNut · 2007-08-10 08:45:57

Still shedding....

The first foam fragment came off at 24 seconds after liftoff and appeared to hit the tip of the body flap. The second was 58 seconds after liftoff with a resulting spray or discoloration on the right wing. The third came almost three minutes after liftoff, too late to cause any damage to the right wing.
The most worrisome is the one at 58 seconds.

RobertDyck · 2007-08-10 14:16:15

Still shedding....

I wrote a big long reply, then a power failure. (grumble) There was a hail storm last night, I guess Hydro workers are working on the power lines.

To keep it simple, the Shuttle will always shed foam. The ET is a big, fat tank flying at hypersonic speed with nothing but foam on the outside. That will always rip off foam, the only concern is that it doesn't damage a critical part of the Shuttle's heat shield. The only way to stop it is some sort of skin over the foam. We had long discussions about that; bottom is not going to happen. Now they have repair kits. The Shuttle lost heat shield tiles with the first mission, STS-1, so this repair kit is long overdue. However, now they always fly with an airlock, EMU suit, CanadArm, extension boom, and repair kits for the heat shield. The boom can be used for tile inspection or a foot restraint for an astronaut while fixing tiles. In fact they fixed thermal blankets during the last mission. It's fine, as long as they fly with all that stuff they're safe.

SpaceNut · 2007-08-10 20:09:40

The only down side is loss of payload capability if the gear is transported with the shuttle each time it goes up or down. I assume that not of this is so that will help in that regards.

This mission will be studing Bacterial Growth in Space

The experiment will happen on samples of Streptococcus pneumoniae to investigate the effects of the space environment on the common microorganism.

Vials containing bacterial cultures were loaded aboard space shuttle Endeavor in SPEGIS Canister Assemblies developed by NASA. The hardware consists of three canisters, each containing three sealed polypropylene vials inserted into aluminum jackets to improve contact and enhance thermal transfer. The SPEGIS experiment only requires transfer of the canisters from refrigeration to incubation and then to a freezer to preserve the sample. The SPEGIS experiment will be returned to Earth for analysis by scientists. Since the SPEGIS Canisters are triple-contained and never opened, the crew is never in direct contact with the bacterial cultures.

SpaceNut · 2007-08-10 21:03:45

While the shuttle will get additional inspection of the apparant ice strike of the underbelly near the landing gear there will be lots of things that this mission will be working as well.

The 3 inch gash in a 6 inch tile depending on the examination may chose from a variety of ways to patch it.

University of Colorado or CU to tests tomatoes in space; Students on Earth will help with experiments

Participants in the project will chart the growth of tomato plants, yeast-cell genes and crystals in the weightless environment of space.
One of the experiments will examine seed germination and the growth of several types of miniature, drought-tolerant tomato plants in space. Scientists say the success of the space tomatoes could have implications for growing food during long-term space missions and developing heartier tomato plants for farmers and gardeners on Earth.

RobertDyck · 2007-08-10 22:55:41

The only down side is loss of payload capability if the gear is transported with the shuttle each time it goes up or down. I assume that not of this is so that will help in that regards.

In 1997 NASA flew AERCam Sprint on STS-87. Since then JSC developed the Mini AERCam which only weighs 10 pounds. I don't know if it has lidar for 3D analysis of tile damage, but it's a lot smaller than the boom. The primary advantage of the boom is the foot restraint, so an astronaut doesn't float away after pushing on a tile to fix it. You clould leave the boom on the station so you don't have to carry it up for future missions. Tile repair kits aren't that big or heavy, the airlock is the station docking adapter, and an EMU suit is carried as standard equipment in case cargo bay doors don't close. The emergency procedure is to go out and close the doors by hand, but the doors have never been a problem. CanadArm is needed to place modules being installed.

So the only way to reduce any significant weight is to store a boom on the station. The boom is roughly 100 pounds, stored in the starboard gunwale of the cargo bay. Well, NASA came up with that idea before I did. They will fly a mission in February 2008 without the boom, so the preceeding mission (scheduled for December 2007) will leave a boom at the station.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/story/2007/01/15 … m-mda.html
http://sm.mdacorporation.com/what_we_do/rtf_tech.html

RobertDyck · 2007-08-12 23:33:53

Well, it looks like they'll get to use their patch equipment after all.
http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2007 … unday.html

A laser inspection by Endeavour's astronauts has revealed that a nine-centimetre-long gouge the shuttle suffered during its launch penetrates all the way through thermal tiles on its belly.
The unevenly shaped gouge, which is just over five cm wide, straddles two adjacent tiles and the corner of a third. The inspection, which was carried out on Sunday using the Canadian-made robotic arm Canadarm, showed the damage went through the 2.5-centimetre-thick tiles, exposing the felt material sandwiched between the tiles and the shuttle's aluminum frame.
Mission managers expect to decide Monday, or Tuesday at the latest, whether to send astronauts out to patch the damage.

SpaceNut · 2007-08-13 08:13:28

Saw this late last night along without other such connotation as Canuck in the story line. Which I veiwed as being in bad taste, for I see you as my Canadian freinds who have developed quite a nice piece of equipment. One which I hope will prove worth it to have from here forward so long as shuttle fly's.

SpaceNut · 2007-08-18 20:18:57

Appears that Nasa may end the mission sooner rather than later even with the damaged tile going unrepaired....

noosfractal · 2007-08-18 22:18:27

I think they are worried about the weather - hurricanes can mess up the weather over half the continent.

SpaceNut · 2007-08-22 19:18:58

Controlling time, well not quite...
Shuttle brings space-grown strep bacteria back for study

Niesel and other investigators want to know exactly how Streptococcus pneumoniae changes in microgravity and whether those changes could pose a threat to crew members on a mission with no chance of a quick return to Earth — for example, a months- or years-long journey to Mars and back. In 1999, they began work on SPEGIS (Streptococcus pneumoniae Expression of Genes in Space), a project to grow the bacteria in orbit and bring them back home frozen in “zero-g mode” for study.
Eight years later, six tightly sealed vials of the bugs were launched into orbit in a cold-storage experiment locker that kept them inactivated at about 39 degrees Fahrenheit. To make sure that the shuttle crew would not be exposed to a potential pathogen, the vials themselves were also packed into two sealed aluminum canisters.
On day five of the mission, with the shuttle docked to the International Space Station, the crew raised the canisters and their contents to just above human body temperature and incubated them there for 15 and a half hours. Then they transferred them to a super-cold freezer on the ISS, which dropped the temperature of the canisters to 139 degrees below zero Fahrenheit.
“That locked the bacteria at whatever stage they were at, whatever genes they were expressing and whatever proteins they had present were locked in, because no more metabolism was occurring,” Niesel said. “So we get a picture of what they were like in space at that time, which is the cool part.”
Control experiments conducted on Earth followed every step of the process as it was done in orbit, with canister transfers even timed to the minute. “Now we have two snapshots of the bacteria frozen in time, grown with the same parameters except the microgravity part, and we should be able to see the differences that result when the bacteria see this unique space environment,” Niesel continued.
The bacteria are expected to arrive in Galveston later this week or early next week, kept cold with dry ice all the way to maintain them just as they were in orbit. Once he gets the bacteria in his lab, Niesel plans to conduct complete protein and genetic analyses, as well as possible virulence studies in laboratory mice.

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#1 2007-07-05 04:37:42

Re: STS-118 Endeavour

#2 2007-07-06 01:38:32

Re: STS-118 Endeavour

#3 2007-07-09 13:17:54

Re: STS-118 Endeavour

#4 2007-07-10 15:35:40

Re: STS-118 Endeavour

#5 2007-07-11 09:19:51

Re: STS-118 Endeavour

#6 2007-07-16 15:21:34

Re: STS-118 Endeavour

#7 2007-07-21 10:46:40

Re: STS-118 Endeavour

#8 2007-07-26 13:45:19

Re: STS-118 Endeavour

#9 2007-07-26 20:26:14

Re: STS-118 Endeavour

#10 2007-07-27 04:12:54

Re: STS-118 Endeavour

#11 2007-07-31 20:59:32

Re: STS-118 Endeavour

#12 2007-08-04 12:52:36

Re: STS-118 Endeavour

#13 2007-08-07 01:25:47

Re: STS-118 Endeavour

#14 2007-08-07 22:30:15

Re: STS-118 Endeavour

#15 2007-08-08 11:00:14

Re: STS-118 Endeavour

#16 2007-08-10 08:45:57

Re: STS-118 Endeavour

#17 2007-08-10 14:16:15

Re: STS-118 Endeavour

#18 2007-08-10 20:09:40

Re: STS-118 Endeavour

#19 2007-08-10 21:03:45

Re: STS-118 Endeavour

#20 2007-08-10 22:55:41

Re: STS-118 Endeavour

#21 2007-08-12 23:33:53

Re: STS-118 Endeavour

#22 2007-08-13 08:13:28

Re: STS-118 Endeavour

#23 2007-08-18 20:18:57

Re: STS-118 Endeavour

#24 2007-08-18 22:18:27

Re: STS-118 Endeavour

#25 2007-08-22 19:18:58

Re: STS-118 Endeavour

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