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According to a STS-129 Shuttle Flight Manager memo, available on L2, \u201cNASA is still not on the range for Nov 16th, but preliminary indications are that the Delta IV customer has agreed to slip out of its November 17-20 window
\nto accommodate the shuttle launch.\u201d<\/p>\nSpaceflight news subscription
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While the Air Force still has to review and approve the proposed changes to the Eastern Range schedule, the apparent agreement of the Department of Defense to push the launch of their WGS satellite out of the November 17-20 window would go a long way toward ensuring a longer, more viable launch window for STS-129.<\/p>\n
If the Air Force approves the changes to the Eastern Range schedule, than STS-129 will officially get the range from November 16-19, contingent upon the launch of Atlas V on November 14.<\/p>\n
If Atlas V suffers a one day slip due to weather or some other technical reason, Atlas V will still get a second opportunity on November 15 and Atlantis\/STS-129 will move to November 17.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf the review goes well the Shuttle will get on the range for Nov 16,\u201d notes the Shuttle Flight Manager\u2019s memo. \u201cIf the ATLAS launch, currently on the range for November 11-15, has a weather scrub on Nov. 14th (or some sort of other 1day scrub) they will try again on Nov 15th which will move STS-129 to the 17th.\u201d<\/p>\n
Currently, according to the Flight Manager\u2019s memo, the final day of the launch window for STS-129 is November 19 and would require giving up the mission\u2019s +1 contingency day in order to ensure that Atlantis is not docked to the International Space Station once the Solar Beta Angle exceeds 60 degrees.<\/p>\n
Therefore, assuming November 16 remains a viable launch date, this new launch window would be November 16-19 \u2013 allowing Mike Leinbach and the Shuttle Launch Team to make three launch attempts in four days.<\/p>\n
Because of the short nature of the launch window, if November 17 becomes the first day of the window due to the Atlas V, the Flight Manager\u2019s memo indicates that special consideration would be given to executing three launch attempts in a row (November 17, 18, and 19).<\/p>\n
Usually, the launch team tries to avoid three attempts in a row do to launch team fatigue concerns and the ever-present possibility of an on-pad abort in the final 6.6 seconds of the countdown.<\/p>\n
In fact, Mike Leinbach expounded upon this point in March during the pre-launch campaign for Shuttle Discovery\u2019s STS-119 mission.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe thing we try to protect with three in a row, from a launch team perspective, is the on-pad abort. That\u2019s the most critical thing we do on the launch team. If the team is fatigued I wouldn\u2019t want to go into that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nevertheless, should Atlantis end up missing the November launch window for whatever reason, NASA has at least four launch attempts possible at the beginning of December.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we fail to launch within this window, we will stand down until December 6th. We\u2019ll then have the capability to support 4 launch attempts in 5 days,\u201d notes the Flight Manager\u2019s memo.<\/p>\n
This correlates to a December launch window of December 6-10.<\/p>\n
If, for some reason, Atlantis were to miss the December launch window as well, the mission would have to wait until at least January 2, 2010 because of Soyuz crew arrival operations at the ISS on December 23 and the unwillingness of NASA to launch a Shuttle mission over the Year End Roll Over (YERO) unless absolutely necessary \u2013 although this is not a hard constraint, following successful work to find a YERO solution<\/p>\n
STS-129 Status:<\/p>\n
With the Space Shuttle Program Flight Readiness Review (SSP FRR) complete, no major issues have been identified as show stoppers for Atlantis\u2019 penultimate mission.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe FRR concluded yesterday and the SSP gave their concurrence to continue toward the Joint FRR on 10\/29 with a target launch date for STS-129 of NET 11\/16,\u201d noted information on L2. \u201cNo real technical show stoppers were discussed; however range conflicts still need to be addressed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Currently, the main FRRs (the Space Operations Mission Directorate FRR) is scheduled to take place on October 29 at the Kennedy Space Center.<\/p>\n
The SOMD FRR, headed by Associate Administrator for Space Flight Operations Bill Gerstenmairer, will officially approve Atlantis\u2019 launch date after thoroughly reviewing all aspects of the vehicle and the mission.<\/p>\n
Furthermore, the ISS Stage Operations Readiness Review \u2013 a readiness review by the ISS Program to confirm their readiness post-STS-129 \u2014 was completed on October 19th. As a result, \u201cthe ISS Program and its International Partners are ready to support the STS-129\/ULF3 mission,\u201d notes the Flight Manager\u2019s memo.<\/p>\n
![\"A2\"](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/A216.jpg\" "\\"A2\\"")
Meanwhile, at the Kennedy Space Center\u2019s Space Station Processing Facility, Atlantis\u2019 payload \u2013 Express Logistics Carrier (ELC)-1 and ELC-2 \u2013 has been cleared for flight.<\/p>\nThe ELCs were loaded into the Payload Transport Canister on October 21st ahead of the scheduled October 29th delivery to LC-39A.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe ELC1 & 2 Pump Module MLI clearance and robotics snag issues have successfully been resolved,\u201d notes the Flight Manager\u2019s memo. \u201cStraps have been installed on both Pump Modules to better secure the Multi-Layer Insulation.\u201d<\/p>\n
The memo goes on to note the \u201cGreat work by the joint Payload Cargo Engineering and KSC Payload Processing Teams for successfully identifying and resolving this issue within one week of the Payload Readiness Review.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, at LC-39A, Solid Rocket Booster HPU (Hydraulic Power Unit) plugs have been completed, the PV-11 Fill and Drain valve actuator on Atlantis has been successfully Removed and Replaced, and Helium signature tests have been run.<\/p>\n
Final S0008 activities that were deferred from the VAB to the pad will be finished this week as well.<\/p>\n
Also at the pad for the first part of this week was the STS-129 crew who are undergoing what is now a split Terminal Countdown Demonstration Test (TCDT).<\/p>\n
The actual TCDT \u2013 consisting of a mock countdown with simulated pad abort \u2013 won\u2019t take place until early November; however, the Flight Crew is receiving the pad egress training portion of the multi-day TCDT activities as well as approach and landing runs for Commander Hobaugh and Pilot Wilmore in the Shuttle Training Aircraft.<\/p>\n
L2 members<\/em><\/em>: Documentation \u2013 from which the above article has quoted snippets \u2013 is available in full in the related L2 sections, now over 4000 gbs in size.<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As engineers continue to prepare Shuttle Atlantis for her NET (No Earlier Than) November 16 launch, negotiations to secure a longer launch window for STS-129 (the launch window is currently one day long) are underway between NASA and the Department of Defense. Meanwhile, the SSP Flight Readiness Reviews (FRRs) has concluded with a recommendation to […]<\/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":[8296,9199],"class_list":["post-40958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-delta-iv","tag-sts-129"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40958"}],"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=40958"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40958\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}