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\u201cPayload Bay Doors closed December 4th and Strong backs removed December 5th. Wings closed for flight. Elevons closed out and on chain falls until January 2nd to prevent obstructions. RCC Covers to remain in Place until January 2nd. Tire (pressure) top off for Flight will begin on January 2nd.<\/p>\n
\u201cAFT 50-1 and 50-2 Doors installed by December 3rd and Interior AFT ready to support Rollover. OMS purges to be disconnected on January 2nd 2009 for Rollover. Disconnect T-O\u2019s starting January 2nd to be ready to support Weight and C\/G on January 5th.<\/p>\n
\u201cOTS (Orbiter Transporter System) to be delivered to the OPF on January the 5th first shift. OTS OPS to start on January 5th 2nd shift.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/11\/a310.jpg\")
Such has been Discovery\u2019s smooth processing flow, she would have been able to support the proposed launch date advancement to January. However, this has been officially disapproved due to the stress it would have caused on \u201cCrew Loading\u201d \u2013 which represents the crew\u2019s training schedule. Feb. 12 remains the launch date target.<\/p>\n
\u201cTraining Landscape for a Launch Date of 1\/20\/09: Training Duration: 11\/17\/08 \u2013 1\/14\/09 (Crew in quarantine on 1\/13\/09). Represents an acceleration of 17 Business Days. 6.6 Weeks available training time in calendar until Launch (if Holidays and Leave preserved),\u201d noted one of several presentations on the proposal \u2013 available on L2.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo retain current Avg Crew Loading (44 hrs \/ week) training content must be deleted. To Accelerate by 3 Weeks Delete: 816 crew hours (28 percent of Total Training Time).\u201d<\/p>\n
Three scenarios were considered in the resulting assessment, all of which would have led to either the removal of crew leave over Thanksgiving and Christmas, the removal of training content, or a combination of the two.<\/p>\n
All three options were not recommended by either the Astronaut Office, or MOD (Mission Operations Directive), with comments ranging from \u201cThe complete elimination of all crew holidays and leave between now and 1\/20\/09 is unacceptable to the Crew Office,\u201d to, \u201cThe resulting crew loading from this acceleration option is unacceptably high.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ultimately, the reduction in crew training, and additional strain on the training schedule over the upcoming crew leave was deemed to be a risk to safety \u2013 which led to its expected shelving.<\/p>\n
\u201cOptions 1 \u2013 3 represent three basic approaches to reducing training content,\u201d added one presentation. \u201cThe trade space is large, and there are other permutations, all of which involve significant loss of flight content and additional safety risk.\u201d<\/p>\n
Following STS-119, NASA hopes to finally launch Atlantis on the flagship mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope. This mission has been delayed due to a hardware failure on orbit, and once again via issues with the ground testing of its replacement.<\/p>\n
However, engineers are close \u2013 to the point their findings may be sent to management this coming week \u2013 to confirming they are ready to support the May launch opportunity.<\/p>\n
The latest manifest \u2013 available on L2 \u2013 shows STS-125 with a NET (No Earlier Than) May 12 launch date \u2013 pending timely delivery of the replacement hardware to the Kennedy Space Center (KSC).<\/p>\n
Also confirmed in the latest manifest document are the downstream changes to the 2009 flights, which involves an orbiter swap and delay to two missions.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/11\/a226.jpg\")
The FAWG manifest \u2013 which is used for processing milestone planning \u2013 confirms the changing of orbiters for STS-128\/17A, which is now set to launch on August 6 via Discovery (OV-103). Originally, STS-128 was due to launch on Atlantis at the end of July.<\/p>\n
The mission was recently baselined as a 11 day, two EVA flight to the ISS. However, this will now change, with another baseline soon to follow. It will also include the first flight of the OI-34 Flight Software, and will be the last scheduled ISS crew rotation to be undertaken by the Space Shuttle Program (SSP).<\/p>\n
The primary payload will be the Multi-Purpose Logistics Module (MPLM) Leonardo and the Lightweight Multi-Purpose Experiment Support Structure Carrier (LMC).<\/p>\n
As part of the swap, Atlantis now gains STS-129\/ULF3, which will launch on November 12, moving from its previous slot of October 15. This mission was previously allocated to Discovery, but is now likely to move to Atlantis \u2013 following the reassignment of STS-128.<\/p>\n
STS-129 will deliver the first two of five Express Logistics Carriers (ELCs) to the ISS, and is currently due to return Canadian Space Agency astronaut \u2013 and ISS Expedition 20 Flight Engineer-4 \u2013 Robert Thirsk to Earth. This mission will also be re-baselined.<\/p>\n
STS-130 \u2013 currently assigned to Endeavour \u2013 is now likely to be the opening mission of 2010, which will result in the delivery of Node 3 to the ISS. The payload is due to arrive at KSC\u2019s Shuttle Landing Facility (SLF) on February 13, 2009.<\/p>\n
STS-131 \u2013 a logistics run to the ISS \u2013 will then follow, ahead of two CLF (Contingency Logistic Flight) missions (STS-132, STS-133) which had been scheduled for mid April and late May respectively. These missions were recently covered in the approval of latest Senate Bill.<\/p>\n
Efforts behind the scenes are continuing on evaluations into flying shuttle to 2012. Assessments have proved the viability from a hardware standpoint, with a final decision \u2013 notably based on additional monies for the space program \u2013 due next year.<\/p>\n
At the same time, the Constellation Program (CxP) have finalized three options for advancing their schedule, as part of the effort to close the gap. Notes from the meetings (L2) will be part of a forthcoming article.<\/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":" Only around five weeks will separate Endeavour\u2019s return home from her STS-126 mission, and when Discovery is due to rollover to the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) ahead of STS-119. Discovery\u2019s upcoming milestones are part of a realigned plan for the 2009 missions. However, STS-119\u2019s launch date advancement has been disapproved by shuttle managers. The S6 […]<\/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":[9157,9241,8184,9123,8290,9038,9205,9199,9183,9184],"class_list":["post-41254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-extension","tag-schedule","tag-sls-orion","tag-sts-119","tag-sts-125","tag-sts-127","tag-sts-128","tag-sts-129","tag-sts-130","tag-sts-131"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41254"}],"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=41254"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41254\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}