NASA has officially noted that they intend to fly 18 more International Space Station (ISS) assembly missions \u2013 and one Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission (HSM) \u2013 before retiring the Space Shuttle in 2010. <\/p>\n
Comments made by NASA Assistant Associate Administrator Mark Uhran note that the ISS construction ambitions have been downscaled.\n<\/p>\n
NASA, who are aiming for three Shuttle missions next year, believe it is possible to fulfil the 19 mission manifest before 2010 \u2013 with the expected debut of the Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) coming two years later.<\/font><\/p>\n The US space agency hopes test flight STS-121 \u2013 dubbed RTF 3 (Return to Flight 3) \u2013 will finally prove all safety measures are now effective, with a solution to the foam liberation issue believed to have been solved. The major concern was over a piece of foam that shed from the PAL Ramp area of the External Tank (ET) on STS-114. As previously reported, all PAL Ramps will be removed before the launch of Discovery next May.<\/font><\/p>\n NASA will have to then launch at least four missions in 2007, 08, 09 and 2010 to reach the 19 flights on the remaining manifest. However, there have been casualties in the process of aligning the Shuttle\u2019s final role for NASA \u2013 ISS assembly requirements.<\/font><\/p>\n According to Uhran, speaking to USA Today, the Centrifuge Lab \u2013 which was to test animals and the affect different levels of gravity have on them \u2013 is now highly unlikely to make the final ISS configuration.<\/font><\/p>\n The Earth Observatory \u201cCupola\u201d module will also be scrapped from the manifest, if NASA falls short of the 19 flight manifest before 2010.<\/font><\/p>\n And previous noted by NASA as being removed from the manifest, Node 3, was also mentioned by Uhran as too \u201clow priority\u201d to make the trip into Low Earth Orbit. Uhran believes that \u2013 by 2008 at the earliest \u2013 the ISS will be able to sustain six people without Node 3.<\/font><\/p>\n SpaceX (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});<\/p>\n However, while all international contract elements of the ISS will make the trip on the Shuttle, there was no mention of any outstanding work being completed by the SDLV (Shuttle Derived Launch Vehicle) \u2013 which is not expect to be in service until around 2015.<\/font><\/p>\n Adding to the woes of finalising the construction of the ISS is ESA\u2019s (European Space Agency) nagging problems with their ATV ship. ATV-1 \u201cJules Verne\u201d was set to help out with assembly missions of the ISS next year, although unofficially ESA has now ruled out the debut of the ship until at least mid 2007 due to problems with laser guidance, final testing of the ATV-ISS docking systems and outstanding hardware system integration and testing. <\/font><\/p>\n The highlight of the remaining flights of the Shuttle will be the Hubble Servicing Mission. <\/font><\/p>\n While no date has been fixed for the mission which will replace batteries and ensure an extended life of the much-loved telescope past 2010, the mission will be the only flight on the manifest that won\u2019t have the \u2018safe haven\u2019 option of the ISS \u2013 adding risk should the Shuttle (expected to be Endeavour) sustain serious damage on assent.<\/font><\/p>\n NASA is believed to have planned an STS-300 style rescue mission to be in place for this mission \u2013 with one of Endeavour\u2019s sister ships being on the adjacent pad should a serious problem arise.<\/font><\/p>\n The three Orbiters at the Kennedy Space Center have no outstanding issues in their respective processing status. <\/font><\/p>\n Discovery is in the midst of launch processing after her mission earlier in the year, Atlantis \u2013 recently de-stacked due to the postponement of STS-121 \u2013 has little by the way of processing work until preparations begin for her launch next year \u2013 and Endeavour is continuing power up processing after coming out of a near-two year Orbiter Major Modification (OMM) period.<\/font><\/p>\n <\/p>\n For live updates on the world\u2019s only Shuttle specific forum, click here: <\/em><\/font>http:\/\/forum.nasaspaceflight.com\/<\/em><\/font><\/font><\/u><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" NASA has officially noted that they intend to fly 18 more International Space Station (ISS) assembly missions \u2013 and one Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission (HSM) \u2013 before retiring the Space Shuttle in 2010. Comments made by NASA Assistant Associate Administrator Mark Uhran note that the ISS construction ambitions have been downscaled. NASA, who are […]<\/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":[],"class_list":["post-42270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42270"}],"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=42270"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42270\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}