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This week will also kick off the Flight Readiness Reviews (FRRs) for STS-125, opening with the second MOD FRR review \u2013 following the previous FRRs last September, before the mission was delayed \u2013 outlining the upcoming mission in detail.<\/p>\n
This will also coincide with the Mission Management Team (MMT) undergoing a pre-brief, which will be headed by Leroy Cain.<\/p>\n
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\u201cFolks have a lot of other things to do between now and STS-125, and have a lot of other meetings on the schedule. We won\u2019t do it if it does not look necessary,\u201d noted Mr Cain on the Stand-Up.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn STS-125, there will be a MMT pre-brief. It will be scheduled this week. It will be a challenge to find a place to put it on the calendar with the meetings we have in place.\u201d<\/p>\n
Flow Control Valves:<\/p>\n
![\"a24\"](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/04\/a24.jpg\" "\\"a24\\"")
As with STS-119, more discussion will take place on the Flow Control Valves (FCVs), following the incident observed during STS-126\u2019s ride to orbit late last year. This in turn led to a major part of the FRR process being dedicated towards the gaining of Flight Rationale ahead of STS-119.<\/p>\nClick here for NASASpaceflight.com articles on the FCV issue since STS-126.<\/p>\n
Including two Special PRCBs (Program Requirement Control Board) meetings, the launch date was delayed until managers and engineers were certain they had the right amount of confidence in flying the three FCVs on Discovery \u2013 without the requirement to standdown for a redesign, which some engineers had been calling for.<\/p>\n
As per usual, the decision to fly with three \u201ccherry picked\u201d valves that had previously flown without issue has been proven to be the correct decision, with no anatomies noted during Discovery\u2019s ascent.<\/p>\n
That confidence has been boosted via flight inspections, proving the valves didn\u2019t suffer from cracks \u2013 which is the driver for an eventual liberation, as found with one of Endeavour\u2019s valves.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn OV-103 (Discovery\u2019s) FCVs, did get them out last week and to Vacco over the weekend and inspected,\u201d noted the Orbiter Project at the Johnson Space Center. \u201cTwo of the three looked really good, no cracks. The other one picked up a little scratch.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will have to figure out where that came from, and how to get it turned around. Right now the first blush is that we might have to do some flow-balance testing on it. Will work through that. It looks like the FCVs came through pretty well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Due to the nominal performance of the valves, the sets of FCVs that are set to fly with Atlantis on STS-125, and Endeavour on STS-127 (and STS-400 if required), will be likely to gain the required flight rationale without the need for a major discussion at the FRRs.<\/p>\n
![\"a311\"](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/04\/a311.jpg\" "\\"a311\\"")
A proposed metal plate that would \u201cbeef up\u201d the most \u2018at risk\u2019 area of the downstream plumbing in the Main Propulsion System (MPS) \u2013 known as the 90 degree elbow bend \u2013 is now unlikely to have a place in future plans, due to the reduced threat of a liberation, which would have to be on a greater magnitude than that observed during STS-126 to cause damage in this area of the MPS.<\/p>\nIn fact, the encouraging post flight inspections of the valves, from which no cracks have been found, will aid flight rationale for at least STS-125.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe FCV data is very important, and getting those three valves off of STS-119 is the first time we\u2019ve had a chance to look at just one flight\u2019s performance in terms of crack growth,\u201d added the Orbiter Project.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is good to see that we had no cracks on the valves within our detectability limits pre-flight, and then after flight we don\u2019t see any as well. It is good news for our flight rationale.\u201d<\/p>\n
No major issues are expected to be discussed when managers close out STS-119 via what is called the post-flight IFA (In Flight Anomaly) review, to be conducted during Thursday\u2019s PRCB meeting \u2013 thanks in part to Discovery\u2019s clean mission.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn STS-119 MMT debrief, do not have much to talk about. For most of the folks solicited, we really don\u2019t have much to debrief from a MMT standpoint,\u201d noted Mr Cain on the Stand-Up report.<\/p>\n
Items likely to be discussed are the usual \u201csquawks\u201d that are noted on most Solid Rocket Booster (SRBs) IFA presentations, along with the problem with the ET Umbilical Well Camera, which failed to properly execute its flash \u2013 or download imagery \u2013 during post ET-sep.<\/p>\n
\u201cStill working on the ET camera off of STS-119. Got it back to JSC. Did some troubleshooting, and had the same indications as on flight with the camera,\u201d added engineering notes. \u201cSent the camera on command and nothing happened; the laptop couldn\u2019t find the camera. They opened of up the box and couldn\u2019t find anything.\u201d<\/p>\n
Any items of interest found during the STS-119 post-flight IFA review will be added to the STS-125 SSP (Space Shuttle Program) FRR documentation.<\/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":"
Aiding the requirement of flight rationale for STS-125, engineers have found that the three replacement Flow Control Valves (FCVs) that flew on STS-119 suffered from no cracking, following inspections on the valves after they had been removed from Discovery. The news comes as managers prepare to conduct both the post flight review of STS-119 and […]<\/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":[9191,9123,8290],"class_list":["post-41138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-fcv","tag-sts-119","tag-sts-125"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41138"}],"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=41138"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41138\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}