Washington, DC
Endevor lift off the last night time launch
KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. — The space shuttle Endeavour thundered into orbit before dawn Monday morning, briefly turning darkness into daylight.
It was the second effort to get the Endeavour off the ground, 24 hours after clouds over the launching pad scrubbed Sunday’s attempt.
Clouds again encroached, but there were enough holes to allow the Endeavour to lift off on schedule at 4:14 a.m., a bright streak rising to the northeast along the East Coast. It was the 130th launching of a shuttle and probably the last night launching as the program winds down and ends after four more flights.
“What a beautiful launch we had this morning,” William H. Gerstenmaier, NASA’s associate administrator for space operations, said in a news conference.
The Endeavour is carrying the last major piece of the International Space Station. Two of Endeavour’s crew members, Nicholas J. M. Patrick and Lt. Col. Robert L. Behnken of the Air Force, will conduct three spacewalks to install a 23-foot-long, 15-foot-wide Tranquility module.
The module includes a seven-windowed dome, or cupola, that will offer panoramic views of Earth and space. The viewing area, large enough for two astronauts, will be used for controlling the station’s 60-foot-long robotic arm and to observe other activities outside the station.
The Endeavour is also delivering space parts for the station’s water system that recycles urine and sweat into clean water.
A camera on the shuttle’s external tank detected a strip of insulating foam falling off about two minutes into the flight. Mr. Gerstenmaier estimated it at a quarter-inch thick and a foot long.
“It didn’t appear to impact the orbiter,” Mr. Gerstenmaier said, “and we see no damage to the orbiter.”
As with all shuttle missions since the loss of the Columbia in 2003, engineers will spend several days examining the foam loss to ensure there was no damage to the Endeavour’s heat shield.
The commander of the 13-day mission is Col. George D. Zamka of the Marines, and the pilot is Col. Terry W. Virts Jr. of the Air Force. The other crew members are Stephen K. Robinson and Capt. Kathryn P. Hire of the United States Navy Reserve.
While the Endeavour mission was off to a smooth start, Gen. Charles F. Bolden Jr., the NASA administrator, admitted he had not done a good job of laying out a clear picture of the agency’s future.
At a news conference on Saturday, he accepted blame for the rocky reception that has greeted President Obama’s plans to revamp NASA’s human spaceflight program.
The plans, revealed in Mr. Obama’s budget request for 2011, call for the cancellation of Constellation, the program that was to return astronauts to the Moon by 2020. Under the new budget proposal, money that went to the Constellation would instead be used to develop new space technologies like fueling stations in orbit, and the task of developing rockets for carrying astronauts to the International Space Station would be turned over to commercial companies.
General Bolden said some of the work in the Constellation program might yet be preserved. “I don’t want to throw out the baby with the bath water, if you will,” he said.
General Bolden also offered some conciliatory words as he acknowledged that the proposal for NASA would probably change as it winds through the budget process. “I do have to negotiate with my partners in Congress,” he said.
He said NASA would still work on a heavy-lift rocket even as the budget proposal seeks to cancel the Ares V, the behemoth rocket that would have carried the cargo for a lunar mission.
General Bolden said, however, that he did not expect the heavy-lift rocket to be ready until after 2020.
No comments:
Post a Comment