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Meetings have been taking place on Monday and Tuesday, in order to create a forward plan ahead of Wednesday\u2019s Agency level get-together between FRR level managers. By the time this meeting takes place, it is hoped all engineering departments will be fully briefed on the testing data and the forward plan towards flight rationale.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we have that (full documentation), we will make sure that it is vetted completely through the Engineering, Safety, and Program communities, that we have agreement before we march off and execute,\u201d added Mr Shannon. \u201cOne of the things that has been difficult has been for folks that aren\u2019t close to it to keep up with all the things that have been going on.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will have a very clear roadmap of exactly how we build the flight rationale. As we go through the process of building that rationale, we will have the day-by-day schedule and see where that ends up with a launch date.\u201d<\/p>\n
NASA educational resources
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Notes on the favored forward plan, one which has \u201cconfidence of launching in March\u201d, involves a two fold approach of \u201ccherry picking\u201d the best valves available to be replaced into Discovery, along with added protection to the most vulnerable area of Discovery\u2019s MPS lines, via test results that have fired particles of liberated valves at mock-ups of the MPS plumbing.<\/p>\n
Processing notes late on Tuesday confirmed engineers are now preparing to remove Discovery\u2019s FCVs \u2013 which were themselves replacements during the early pad flow \u2013 to be replaced by valves that have flown on several missions.<\/p>\n
It is understood these valves have shown no signs of cracking, thus are deemed as \u201cgood\u201d valves for a least STS-119, given they are less likely to liberate parts of the poppet lip, than newer, less predictable valves.<\/p>\n
The eventual plan is to redesign the valves \u2013 most likely involving a stronger metal that is less likely to crack \u2013 for missions to be flown later in the manifest.<\/p>\n
Beefing up the downstream line \u2013 with the main threat area associated with the 90 degree elbow immediately downstream of the valves \u2013 will involve a \u201cdoubler\u201d being installed around the elbow.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/02\/a228.jpg\")
This should provide the additional protection required against a breach in the line, should a liberation from the FCV smash against the bend, which has been shown \u2013 via impact testing \u2013 to have some negative outcomes.<\/p>\n\u201cThe team is putting a concept to build a doubler that could be installed on the end of the suspect elbows on the MPS lines that are directly behind the flow control valve,\u201d noted processing information on L2 on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
\u201cCurrently the concept uses a plate with an o-ring that is mechanically held in place with fastener from the opposite flange. We are awaiting further information to further the design such as how thick the material will need to be to absorb an impact and how much mass can be installed on the lines.\u201d<\/p>\n
Teams have been working on this idea during the week, and is currently the favoured approach. However, it still needs to win the approval of the FRR members, in order to become a positive factor in the building the required flight rationale.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are going to be much more rigorous in the approach that we take, and make sure that the entire community\u2019s concerns are heard throughout,\u201d added Mr Shannon. \u201cAnd wherever that leads us from a launch date standpoint, that is where we will be.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we go fly, we want the entire team to be confident and support the actions that we are taking. That\u2019s the way we are going to approach it.<\/p>\n
\u201cOtherwise, the FRR went really well and we got everything cleared off the plates. So, I think that once we have this plan, we can get the agreement from everyone like I fully expect to, that it will be smooth sailing to our STS-119 launch date.\u201d<\/p>\n
Currently, Discovery is holding at a pad flow of five days to launch. Latest estimates on a potential NET (No Earlier Than) launch date is March 7, which will give STS-119 a launch window of around a week.<\/p>\n
Should Discovery fail to launch within the window, or if flight rationale is not gained in time to launch in March, STS-119 will move to a NET of around April 7, once the Soyuz cut out restriction with the International Space Station (ISS) clears.<\/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":"
A launch of STS-119 prior to the Soyuz cut out in mid March remains on the cards, as managers prepare to meet on Wednesday for a launch date discussion. The meeting will also outline a plan to \u201cbeef up\u201d the most vulnerable area of the MPS (Main Propulsion System) plumbing, which would reduce risk associating […]<\/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],"class_list":["post-41179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-fcv","tag-sts-119"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41179"}],"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=41179"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41179\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}