The Space Shuttle Discovery is due to touch down in Florida at 13:43 Eastern time Saturday! As usual, I’ll try to live Tweet it (on my new BA News account). The mission was pretty successful, with the installation of a new truss and solar panels that has given the Space Station full power capacity, as well as bringing up a new crew member and taking one away. The one big glitch was a pin installed upside-down in an equipment platform, which NASA hopes to get fixed soon.
Remember, you can watch the landing on NASA TV (and if you have it, the cable station HDNet commonly shows them live in HD too).
In other Shuttle news, Atlantis rolls out to the pad Tuesday! When it launches (scheduled for May 12) it’ll be heading to perform the last servicing mission on the Hubble Space Telescope.
March 27th, 2009 at 4:33 pm
I hope NASA will have other stuff to do during that mission – it would be sad to have a glitch making it a launchpin.
March 27th, 2009 at 5:13 pm
Phil,
You’re relying on outdated info. The pin isn’t the problem, it’s in the platform hinge itself – latest thinking is a frozen detent spring.
They used a hammer to bash the clamp part of the pin mechanism out of the way anyway, and NASA could just leave it where it is since it won’t end up interfering with anything.
It’s the hinge that may need major surgery on a future EVA, but they have until later on this summer to figure out when and how to fix it.
March 27th, 2009 at 5:16 pm
Torbjörn, you realize that throwing out a pun like that, things can get ugly quickly? We don’t want this to turn into a lynchpin.
March 27th, 2009 at 5:32 pm
I hope the Hubble service mission goes without a hitch. It’s hard to believe that instrument has been up there for so long.
I wouldn’t blame the astronauts for getting something backwards – obviously the engineers are to blame because they couldn’t design things to go in only one way. You can imagine all the jokes his buddies will lay on him … until they slip up and turn into the butt of the jokes.
I’ve always wondered about the guys driving the shuttles out to the launch pad; it takes almost a month to trundle the thing from the hangar to the pad and the vehicle moves at a snail’s pace. What do the drivers do to keep from dying of boredom?
March 27th, 2009 at 6:21 pm
MadScientist – surely it’s got cruise control?
And while on the subject of hitches and throwing things out – what’s the news on that toolbag that drifted off into its own orbit? Still up there?
(Looking forward to a shiny new Hubble!)
March 27th, 2009 at 8:07 pm
Thanks for the heads up. The damn sonic boom from the shuttle still scares the crap out of me every time it lands in Florida. It literally feels like the house has been lifted off it’s foundation and dropped.
March 27th, 2009 at 9:25 pm
the installation of a new truss
Maybe Steve Colbert will accept THAT being named for him?
J/P=?
March 27th, 2009 at 9:53 pm
Phil:
What’s the status of the AMS? The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer will need a mission and surely deserves one.
March 27th, 2009 at 9:56 pm
@MadScientist: ’ve always wondered about the guys driving the shuttles out to the launch pad; it takes almost a month to trundle the thing from the hangar to the pad and the vehicle moves at a snail’s pace. What do the drivers do to keep from dying of boredom?
The drivers (one in each cab) have plenty of things to pay attention to besides direction and speed. There’s around a dozen people, stationed both inside and outside, overseeing the crawler and its systems and hardware when it moves (including the roadbed it travels on).
March 27th, 2009 at 10:19 pm
I just saw a promo while watching Brink saying that the landing will be shown live on the Science Channel, which is good, since I don’t get HDNet.
March 28th, 2009 at 5:21 am
Hi All -
I’ve created a few 3D anaglyph images from the HD video fly around – and they really do make the ISS come alive.
If anyone is interested I’d gladly email them to you : ) my email is here : nathanialburtonbradford at yahoo.co.uk
Search for me on flickr – I’ve posted them there too.
Happy viewing all.
Nathanial BB
March 28th, 2009 at 5:46 am
@Rider I’m green with envy. The most I get is the sound of glass crashing into recycling trucks, which is slightly less awe inspiring than the sonic booms of manned spacecraft returning from orbit.
March 28th, 2009 at 8:42 am
Up on the ISS it must seem like Grand Central Station. No sooner has Discovery undocked and is returning to the Cape, but a Soyuz is launched and docks as of this morning. It’s amazing to me that they (NASA and the Russian Space Program) can handle so many complex operations at the same time. We have come a LONG way since the Mercury program
March 28th, 2009 at 10:16 am
Looks like they waved off the first landing attempt. I can only think – with the weather system to the west – that it’s only going to get worse. But who knows.
March 28th, 2009 at 11:20 am
Dammit, that delay interfers with a soccer game starting at 20:00 MET (landing time is now 20:14 MET / 3:14pm EDT). But probably the weather is favorable for a landing, so I have to find a way to watch both.
March 28th, 2009 at 2:20 pm
Bah… missed it because I read 13:43 Pacific Time! Glad they arrived safely
March 29th, 2009 at 5:14 pm
Brian, touché!
March 29th, 2009 at 8:16 pm
Glad to hear they landed safely, I didn’t realize they delayed it.