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Wayne Hale, who was one of the Shuttle Ascent\/Entry Flight Directors in 1999 but was filling the role of Mission Operations Director for the STS-93 ascent and entry, went into more detail on the second launch attempt in a post a few years ago. Following the scrub of the second attempt, the launch was rescheduled for just under 24 hours later at 12:24 am Eastern time on July 23, 1999, from Launch Pad 39B.<\/p>\n
A disguise works<\/b><\/p>\n
The next night, there was a seven-minute extension of the hold at T-20 minutes to fix an issue at the local Merritt Island Launch Annex (MILA) tracking station, but otherwise the countdown once again smoothly ticked down to a liftoff now scheduled for 12:31 am Eastern time.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe count was very smooth,\u201d John Shannon said in a recent interview. Twenty years ago he was the STS-93 Ascent\/Entry Flight Director in the Shuttle Flight Control Room at the Mission Control Center in Houston, Texas. \u201cLoved this crew, a great crew \u2014 we\u2019d had really good integrated sims.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI had probably the most experienced team I had ever had as an ascent flight director. We had Jon Reding as the Booster, Tim North was the EGIL (Electrical General Instrumentation and Lighting), who did all the electrical systems. The count was great.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now getting into Columbia for a third time in four days, Flight Engineer and Mission Specialist 2 Steve Hawley was perhaps reminded by either the unusual manual cutoff that stopped the first launch attempt or the unusual overnight weather that scrubbed the previous night\u2019s attempt that he\u2019d better wear a disguise. Hawley had a lot of experience ingressing and egressing Discovery and Columbia before STS-93; across five Shuttle launch campaigns, he\u2019d seen a wide variety of last-minute or last-second issues with Space Shuttle Main Engine and launch pad valves, orbiter and Solid Rocket Booster hydraulic power units, and bad weather.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/Steve-Hawley-Traditional-Dress.jpg\")
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Credit: NASA Select\/NASA TV.<\/p>\n
(Photo Caption: A couple of disguises Steve Hawley used to try trick Columbia, which apparently worked. The disguise on left for the last of several STS-61C launch attempt in January 1986, included blocking his name tag. The one on the right was for the third and final launch attempt for STS-93 in July 1999.)<\/em><\/p>\n Although somehow one of the missions launched on the first attempt, Hawley entered the White Room anonymously for the third STS-93 launch attempt. \u201cAnd we have Mission Specialist 2 Steve Hawley with his traditional bag on the third launch attempt hoping that he\u2019s not the one causing the delays, he\u2019s hoping the Shuttle won\u2019t recognize him,\u201d NASA Public Affairs Officer and Launch Commentator Lisa Malone said during the live NASA TV broadcast at the time.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was a fun bunch, you know Steve Hawley\u2019s personality from his bags and his commentary from some other scrubs that he\u2019s had,\u201d Austin said. \u201cThere\u2019s a spectrum of personalities you can get from that type of people, pilots and astronauts, and this was just a great mix of people, I really enjoyed them.\u201d<\/p>\n Redundancy, insight lost \u201cright off the pad\u201d<\/p>\n Thinking back a couple of days to the issue that stopped the first launch attempt, Shannon noted: \u201cWe were all watching the haz gas system as we counted down late and I remember Leroy Cain was sitting next to me, he was watching the weather for me, it was a pretty good night to go launch and we lifted off and the first thing that came to us was Eileen calling down the fuel cell Ph, which meant that we got an alarm.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201c[That] was not unusual, sometimes the way that system worked is it would determine that there was too much of the base, the potassium hydroxide, going into flow and it would give you a spurious Ph [message] right when you lifted off because it would mix up that system a little bit and so she called \u2018fuel cell Ph.’\u201d<\/p>\n Following liftoff, the Shuttle Commander would make a voice call to Mission Control as the vehicle cleared the tower and began its roll and pitch program. For this launch, her nominal call to acknowledge the roll program was underway included the fuel cell Ph message.<\/p>\n In an email, Collins noted when asked what she saw and heard as the vehicle lifted off, \u201cThere was no Master alarm. We had a \u2018tone\u2019 with the pH message. The water pump light flashed but only for a second.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI felt for a second as if I was in a simulator,\u201d she added. \u201cAn interesting note is that this failure was in our last simulation run, less than a week before launch.\u201d<\/p>\n Credit: NASA Select\/NASA TV.<\/p>\n (Photo Caption: Left, Columbia lifts off to start STS-93 early on July 23, 1999. Right, the Flight Director, CapCom, and MOD consoles in the Shuttle Flight Control Room shortly after Columbia reached orbit.)<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cI looked up at the board that had all of the alarms and messages on it and we had a water pump, too, which hadn\u2019t been there right before liftoff along with the fuel cell Ph so I knew something was going on,\u201d Shannon remembered. \u201cI listened to the EGIL\u2019s backroom loop right then and it was clear that we\u2019d had a real short on one of our AC (alternating current\/electrical) buses, I think it was AC 1 Phase Alpha and that had slowed down the water pump enough to give us the message and also gave us the fuel cell Ph message as well.\u201d<\/p>\n For the Booster position on the Flight Control Team, Reding was at the \u201cfront room\u201d console in the Flight Control Room behind Shannon, with the Main Engines and Main Propulsion System \u201cback room\u201d positions working from the Multi-Purpose Support Room nearby. Immediately after Collins called the pH message from Columbia, the Main Engines position reported the loss of two engine controllers (also known as digital controller units or DCUs) \u2014 one on the center engine and one on the right.<\/p>\n \u201cNow the impact [of the Ph message], and this was right off the pad \u2014 we were just getting clear of the tower when this was going on,\u201d Shannon emphasized. \u201cThe bigger thing was that AC bus provided power to the digital controller units.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/Shuttle-FCR-STS-93-Ascent.jpg\")
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