NASA administrator Mike Griffin has said that he expects STS-121 to launch in May, 2006, while also classing the PAL Ramp incident \u2013 the reason for a mini-suspension in flights \u2013 as \u201can engineering mistake.\u201d <\/p>\n
Shuttle Discovery will lead what is being tagged as Return to Flight 3 in a year that will hopefully see all three of NASA\u2019s Orbiters on missions. \u201cWe\u2019re looking at May,\u201d said Griffin in an interview with the Washington Post. \u201cOf course, if additional bad things happen, we\u2019ll re-evaluate.\u201d<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n <\/font><\/p>\n He also paid tribute to the staff of the Michoud Assembly Facility (MAF) in keeping the home of the External Tanks clear of major damage during Hurricane Katrina.<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n \u201cThey kept the diesels running, which kept the pumps running,\u201d Griffin added. \u201cYou fly over it and you can see Michoud is an island of green grass in a sea of mud. The eye (of Katrina) passed right over it.\u201d<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n Griffin also confirmed NASA has found the cause of why a section of the PAL Ramp came off the External Tank during STS-114\u2019s launch. While he refused to officially state the reason, he did give an indication that previous repair work on the area was to blame.<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n http:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/content\/?id=3308<\/font> \u2013 PAL Ramp Article<\/font><\/p>\n \u201cIf it wasn\u2019t for the PAL ramp, we\u2019d have flown this month,\u201d Griffin added. \u201cIt was an engineering mistake. There has been quite of bit of progress and we know why the foam came off.\u201d<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n This \u2013 for the first time \u2013 notes the possibility of the PAL Ramp remaining on the External Tank, with sources noting the previous repair work on the ET was missed by a new form of checking the ET\u2019s insulation foam, a process called Shearography \u2013 brought in post STS-107 \u2013 which is now being re-evaluated.<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n NASA educational resources (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); The NASA head also touched upon the question of continuing the Shuttles operational lifetime past 2010, noting that the commitment is there until that firm date \u2013 with the CEV being used to finish off the construction of the International Space Station, should there be any outstanding work to be done \u2013 and if the money was available for such missions.<\/p>\n Discovery specific forum section: Check back on Thursday for processing and status updates on Atlantis and Endeavour.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" NASA administrator Mike Griffin has said that he expects STS-121 to launch in May, 2006, while also classing the PAL Ramp incident \u2013 the reason for a mini-suspension in flights \u2013 as \u201can engineering mistake.\u201d Shuttle Discovery will lead what is being tagged as Return to Flight 3 in a year that will hopefully see […]<\/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-42279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42279"}],"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=42279"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42279\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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