NASA are still confident that they will be launching Shuttle Discovery on STS-114 \u2013 the long-awaited Return to Flight mission \u2013 in the second half of July. <\/p>\n
A window of July 13 to 31 is the target for bringing the fleet back to full operations for a 28-mission mandate to complete the construction of the International Space Station before the three Orbiters are retired from service.\n<\/p>\n
The confidence of making the July window comes at an ironic time \u2013 a time where Discovery will be rolled-back from Launch Pad 39B and de-stacked from ET-120 and its two Solid Rocket Boosters. A rare event in itself but also \u2013 possibly for the first time ever \u2013 Discovery will be re-stacked with ET-121, the stack that was to be for Atlantis.<\/font><\/p>\n As far as the flow is concerned, the July window is within reach. A delay to around July 19 \u2013 for the start of the window \u2013 would be implemented if a third Tanking Test is required. Otherwise, current modifications to the External Tank \u2013 namely heaters being placed on the ET\u2019s propellant line \u2013 are already placed into the flow.<\/font><\/p>\n \u201cThe only thing that would change that is if we determine that we want to do some other testing,\u201d said Shuttle manager Bill Parsons.<\/font><\/p>\n While the Stafford-Covey Return to Flight task group still have to meet \u2013 and reveal their findings on June 6 \u2013 on conclusion of the receipt of documentation from NASA managers on how they\u2019ve implemented the recommendations of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board \u2013 NASA administrator Mike Griffin has intimated that the group\u2019s findings won\u2019t be the final say on whether NASA will launch. That decision will stay with NASA \u2013 he recently noted.<\/font><\/p>\n Discovery will roll-back to the Vehicle Assembly Building on Thursday \u2013 a slight delay due to United Space Alliance workers checking the landing gear doors \u2013 following the discovery of hairline cracks on sistership Atlantis. However, Discovery has not suffered the same problem \u2013 and neither has the youngest Orbiter, Endeavour.<\/font><\/p>\n Should the largest area of concern \u2013 debris strikes \u2013 prove to pass the concerns of the Debris Verification Board \u2013 Discovery is set to launch in the July window timeframe, a confidence that was repeated by Launch Director Mike Leinbach.<\/font><\/p>\n Space Shuttle models (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});<\/p>\n \u201cWe roll back out to the pad in mid-June,\u201d he said,\u201dand that sets us up fine for the beginning of the launch window.\u201d<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" NASA are still confident that they will be launching Shuttle Discovery on STS-114 \u2013 the long-awaited Return to Flight mission \u2013 in the second half of July. A window of July 13 to 31 is the target for bringing the fleet back to full operations for a 28-mission mandate to complete the construction of 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-42385","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42385"}],"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=42385"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42385\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}