NASA administrator Mike Griffin \u2013 speaking the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics conference \u2013 stated that all remaining Space Shuttle missions should be regarded as test flights. <\/p>\n
The conference, which has been looking through the latest ideas and designs for the Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) and Shuttle Derived Launch Vehicle (SDLV), touched upon the latest plans for taking NASA up to the point when the fleet are retired. Currently employing an \u2018unworkable\u2019 28 flight mandate until the 2010 retirement date, talks have been ongoing with international partners on the affect a large reduction in launch manifest will have on the construction of the International Space Station \u2013 the remaining task of the fleet. \u201cClearly, there remains much to learn about eliminating debris from the Shuttle\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s External Tank,\u201d he said, \u201cBut overall, in my opinion, it was a superbly executed test flight, and it furnished us with our first real data in connection with our efforts to improve the design of the External Tank.\u201d<\/p>\n Griffin also said he did not rule out a mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope \u2013 which would have to be undertaken in 2008, before the batteries start to die on board the popular telescope.<\/p>\n \u201cIf feasible, NASA would conduct a mission to service Hubble,\u201d he added. <\/font><\/p>\n <\/p>\n While hardly surprising, Griffin did noted that the new fleet of space vehicles NASA is working on will have far great capabilities than the current Space Shuttle fleet \u2013 a comment aimed at the major restriction of the Orbiters, that of being unable to travel past Low Earth Orbit (LEO). <\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" NASA administrator Mike Griffin \u2013 speaking the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics conference \u2013 stated that all remaining Space Shuttle missions should be regarded as test flights. The conference, which has been looking through the latest ideas and designs for the Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) and Shuttle Derived Launch Vehicle (SDLV), touched upon the […]<\/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-42293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42293"}],"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=42293"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42293\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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Griffin did give a mention to his viewpoint on STS-114 \u2013 which saw Discovery become the first Orbiter to fly since the loss of Columbia on STS-107 two and a half years ago. While the mission was a success, the media latched upon continuing issues with foam liberation from the External Tank, leading to a requirement for modifications to take place over the coming months at the Kennedy Space Center.<\/p>\n
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\u201cWe seek the ability to land and conduct exploration activities anywhere on the moon, including on the far side or in the polar regions,\u201d he added. \u201cIn our planning, we want to ensure that we are designing systems with the maximum possible applicability to future missions to Mars.\u201d<\/font><\/p>\n