Endeavour is receiving numerous visitors and support equipment during her Californian vacation, as post flight deservicing continues to ramp up towards a Sunday flight home to the Kennedy Space Center (KSC). The orbiter and SCA (Shuttle Carrier Aircraft) duo are expected back in Florida in the middle of next week, following the cross-country trip.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Processing is currently down by over half a day, following a power outage at the Mate\/Demate Facility. An incident \u2013 which involved a crane contacting one of Endeavour\u2019s Orbital Maneuvering System Pods \u2013 is also being investigated.<\/p>\n
\u201cPower returned at 1631 EST Monday. Approx 1.5 shifts down with power loss. Orbiter is on jacks and levelled. White room is in position and hatch is open,\u201d noted the latest processing information on L2.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnexpected vehicle power loss when both ground power supplies failed during cooling reconfiguration after fuel cells were powered down. The vehicle was reconfigured and safed.<\/p>\n
\u201cSuspect a poor power supply AC contactor connection that resulted in a power overload. After the ground power supply was brought back up, powered cycled several times and left to run for several hours, the vehicle was successfully powered back up using the same supply.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/12\/a21.jpg\")
\u201cSSME (Space Shuttle Main Engine) drying and securing, horizontal mates and leak checks and securing T-0 vents for PRSD (Power Reactant Storage and Distributation) offload and FCS (Flight Control System) de-stow. Condor crane that contacted the port OMS pod. Engineering is evaluating.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ground Operations engineers \u2013 known as the B-Team \u2013 were flown out to support Endeavour\u2019s deservicing operations, ahead of her SCA flight out of California this coming weekend \u2013 along with 10,000 lbs of equipment, which was flown out on a C-130 transport aircraft.<\/p>\n
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Turning Endeavour around as soon as possible will allow for the \u201cLeonardo\u201d Multi-Purpose Logistics Module (MPLM) to be removed and re-processed for its next flight \u2013 currently TBA due to another expected manifest re-alignment in the near future.<\/p>\n
\u201cTrying to scramble with respect to returning hardware from EDW,\u201d added the latest Shuttle Stand-up\/Integration report. \u201cHave a Simplified Aid for EVA Rescue (SAFER) and MPLM to get back to support some future rotation flights.\u201d<\/p>\n
Several high profile shuttle managers are also flying out to greet Endeavour, including Mission Management Team (MMT) chair Leroy Cain. They are expected to be on site for the Ferry Flight Readiness Review (FRR), which is due to take place at the weekend.<\/p>\n
Endeavour\u2019s STS-126 mission continues to receive praise, with shuttle manager John Shannon noting on Monday: \u201cIt was a great mission, a long flight, and everybody did a tremendous job. It\u2019s good to have the vehicle back. (She\u2019s) on the West Coast and will be back at KSC in 10 days or so.\u201d<\/p>\n
That praise is fully justified, with additional reports on the health of the orbiter continuing to point towards an extremely clean flight of Endeavour. However, engineering perfection always manages to find faults \u2013 in this case with a flow control valve.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe runway report looked pretty good; the tiles are pretty clean. There were only five areas with damage greater than an inch,\u201d added the Orbiter Project Office. \u201cThe window ding looked about the same as it did on orbit; no signs of propagation. That matched what the windows guys had told us.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe biggest turnaround issue, on what might affect the next flow, is the flow control valve. Because we landed at EDW, they won\u2019t get a chance to look at that and do the X-rays until it gets back to KSC.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn Window 6, didn\u2019t see any increase in the propagation in terms of cracks when we got back on the runway,\u201d elaborated JSC\u2019s Orbiter Project. \u201cWill look at some process improvements for STS-119.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously, MMOD is our Number 1 Program risk. Will see more of these, and think will start using a debris map technique like they have with the TPS, and will be able to clear some of these a little faster.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/12\/a31.jpg\")
Several modifications flew with Endeavour \u2013 such as the new upgrade to the Remote Manipulator System (RMS) end-effector (noted in a SSP Flight Readiness Review presentation on L2) \u2013 which failed to gain a mention on orbit, mainly due to their issue-free operation.<\/p>\n
Now the mission is over, acknowledgement is starting to be noted.<\/p>\n
\u201cAppreciate all of the individuals who worked on those items,\u201d added the Stand-up. \u201cSometimes they don\u2019t get credit when their hardware works very well.\u201d<\/p>\n
And despite the upcoming Christmas\/New Year holiday, the pace won\u2019t be letting up, with Discovery due to rollover to the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) in just over a month\u2019s time. This was referenced by Orbiter manager Steve Stich.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven though we just landed a long mission that spanned three weekends, we have a lot on our plate this week with some key decisions at the PRCB (Program Requirements Control Board),\u201d Mr Stich noted.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are getting ready for the rollout of OV-103 (Discovery). The team\u2019s doing a great job. Keep up the great work.\u201d<\/p>\n
Click HERE to watch MaxQ\u2019s amazing STS-126 Review Video.<\/p>\n
L2 members<\/em><\/em>: All 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":" Endeavour is receiving numerous visitors and support equipment during her Californian vacation, as post flight deservicing continues to ramp up towards a Sunday flight home to the Kennedy Space Center (KSC). The orbiter and SCA (Shuttle Carrier Aircraft) duo are expected back in Florida in the middle of next week, following the cross-country trip. Processing […]<\/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":[9219],"class_list":["post-41245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-sts-126"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41245"}],"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=41245"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41245\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}