- \n
- STS-133 UPDATES<\/li>\n
- L2 STS-133 Special Section<\/li>\n
- Click here to Join L2<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
In all, the 11+1+2 day flight will see Discovery docked to the ISS for six full days and two partial days (docking day and undocking day). During this docked phase of the ULF-5 flight, two scheduled EVAs (Spacewalks) will be performed by Al Drew and Tim Kopra from the International Space Station\u2019s Quest Airlock and 30 hours of middeck transfers will be completed to and from Discovery and the ISS.<\/p>\n
To accomplish this mission, Discovery will carry four full N2 (Nitrogen) tanks \u2013 with a minimum of 15 lbs of N2 transferred to the ISS starting on FD-3 (Flight Day 3).<\/p>\n
Additionally, Discovery will launch with four H2 and four O2 cryo tank sets to power her Fuel Cells during the flight. A 5th cryo tank set was removed from OV-103 prior to STS-131 as a weight saving measure to increase the amount of up mass possible on the final two flights of the veteran vehicle.<\/p>\n
After PRSD (Power Reactant Storage and Distribution) loading is complete on L-2 days, a minimum of 100 lbs of O2 will be offloaded from each of the 4 O2 tanks to assist with center of gravity and Ascent Performance Margin (APM) for the flight.<\/p>\n
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/10\/A42.jpg\" "\\"A4\\"")
While a 100 lb O2 offload from each O2 tank is the FRR baseline for the PRSD load, the rather tight APM on STS-133 has led to a discussion of a possible 255 lb max O2 offload from each O2 tank.<\/p>\nAn offload of 255 lbs O2 from each O2 tank would result in no O2 transfer to ISS and a \u201cno margin\u201d situation on O2 consumables.<\/p>\n
This is not to say that there would literally be no margin of O2, rather that the flight control team would assume there to be \u201cno margin\u201d when setting up Discovery\u2019s deorbit\/landing options at the end of the mission.<\/p>\n
Additionally, the earlier in the launch window Discovery launched would directly translate to the margin of O2 remaining in her O2 tanks.<\/p>\n
Nonetheless, should flight managers decide against the additional O2 offload, Discovery\u2019s Flight Crew could transfer up to 75 lbs of O2 to the ISS during docked operations. Since the ISS O2 tanks can only accept ~75 lbs at this time, Discovery\u2019s crew would not transfer more than that amount of O2 to ISS.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/10\/A53.jpg\" "\\"A5\\"")
Furthermore, with these cryo loads, the STS-133 launch team will have ~184 hours (7.6 days) of pad hold time available before a 48 hour scrub turnaround would be necessary to top off the limiting commodity \u2013 H2 in this case. This pad hold time is based on the completion of H2 PRSD loading by L-45 hours and the completion of O2 loading by L-43 hours.<\/p>\nUsing this PRSD load, Discovery\u2019s three Fuel Cells, in addition to providing electrical power for OV-103\u2019s systems, will also provide power to one GLACIER and CGBA and two AEMs from launch through landing, one GLACIER from FD-4 through landing, the PMM (Permanent Multipurpose Module) Leonardo from launch through FD-6, and Primary Logics and Drivers from prelaunch through docking to \u201cmitigate orbiter PCA issues,\u201d notes the master Mission and Stage Overview presentation from the MOD FRR (Mission Operations Director Flight Readiness Review), available for download on L2.<\/p>\n
Finally, for the 11+1+2 day mission, 66 LiOH (Lithium Hydroxide) CO2 scrubbing canisters will be needed. Twenty-nine canisters are already stowed on Discovery\u2019s middeck and four additional canisters will be taken from the pre-positioned stock on the ISS. To accommodate the remaining demand, the ISS\u2019s dual bed CDRA (Carbon Dioxide Removal Assembly) and Vozduhk will provide CO2 removal service for the Orbiter during the docked phase of the mission.<\/p>\n
Launch Windows:<\/p>\n
With these considerations and procedures in place, Discovery\u2019s launch window is expected to open on November 1, 2010 following the conclusion of the Cocoa Beach Air show at the end of the preceding week.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/10\/A33.jpg\" "\\"A3\\"")
This will give Discovery\u2019s launch team only seven days to launch the mission before standing down until at least November 24 due to a beta angle exceedance on orbit. This period, known as a Beta Angle Cutout, is used to describe a period of time when the angle of the sun in relation to the orbital plane of the ISS is such that it creates temperatures that violate the safety guidelines of the mated Shuttle\/Station complex.<\/p>\nGiven this constraint, Discovery\u2019s opening launch attempt on November 1 would occur at ~16:40:13 EDT. The precise second of launch will be determined, as always, during the final hold at T-9 minutes and will reflect real-time tracking and perturbations of the Station\u2019s orbit.<\/p>\n
As always, launch will be timed for the millisecond Earth\u2019s rotation carries Launch Pad 39A into the dead-center of the Station\u2019s ground track \u2013 called the in-plane launch time. The actual launch window for each launch time listed here begins five (5) minutes prior to and ends five (5) minutes after the listed time for all FD-3 rendezvous opportunities \u2013 which exist for every launch day in the early November window.<\/p>\n
Therefore, the daily launch times for Discovery\u2019s November launch window, according to the Mission and Stage Overview presentation: Nov. 2 at 16:17:42 EDT, Nov. 3 at 15:51:59 EDT, Nov. 4 at 15:29:28 EDT, Nov. 5 at 15:03:46 EDT, Nov. 6 at 14:41:14 EDT, and Nov. 7 13:15:23 EST. NOTE: The United States transition to Eastern Standard Time at 0200 hours Sunday, Nov. 7, thus making the Nov. 7 attempt 13:15:23 EST.<\/p>\n
STS-133 Specific Articles: http:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/tag\/sts-133\/<\/p>\n
In addition to these in-plane times, Discovery will also have FD-4 rendezvous launch capability \u2013 based on phasing angles \u2013 every other day of the early November launch period stating on the opening day of the window.<\/p>\n
FD-4 rendezvous launch opportunities exist on Nov. 1, 3, 5, and 7th. The FD-4 rendezvous launch opportunities translate to an additional 2-3 minutes of launch window past the nominal 10-minute launch window on these days.<\/p>\n
Only FD-3 rendezvous launch opportunities exist for Nov. 2, 4, and 6.<\/p>\n
As with numerous previous launches on days with FD-4 rendezvous capability, the STS-133 launch team will be allowed to make use of the additional times in order to launch Discovery and will not be constrained to FD-3 launch times only.<\/p>\n
Conversely, on Nov. 7 \u2013 should that day be necessary and should the launch team, for whatever reason, decide to target a launch time PRIOR to in-plane \u2013 some launch times prior to the specified in-plane time may not be available due to phasing constraints between Discovery and the ISS.<\/p>\n
(Lead and Pad Photographs: Larry Sullivan, NASASpaceflight.com and MaxQ Entertainment. Graphics, L2 presentations)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As NASA and Space Shuttle Discovery prepare for two important milestones this week in the STS-133\/ULF-5 launch campaign (the SSP FRR on Wednesday and the ULF-5 payload to pad delivery on Thursday), flight managers are pressing ahead with their review of the specific PRSD requirements for Discovery as well as her available launch window opportunities […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[9051],"class_list":["post-40639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-sts-133"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40639"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40639"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40639\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}