Navy Commander Mark Kelly has no hesitation when it comes to the decision of being part of a four-man crew on board Atlantis \u2013 on a mission that everyone at NASA hopes will never be required\u2026.STS-300.\n<\/p>\n
Atlantis \u2013 currently in preparations for STS-121 in Orbiter Processing Facilty-1 (OPF) \u2013 is set for a July launch on the second Return to Flight (RTF) mission. However, the contingency in place for the next two launches will firstly see Atlantis being on standby should there be a critical failure during Discovery\u2019s mission.<\/font> <\/font> \u2018If seven friends were up in space and needed to get home,\u2019 Kelly said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I\u2019m willing to take a lot of risk to do that, and I understand that, and it\u2019s not a decision I will have to make later. I\u2019ve already made that decision.\u2019 <\/font> As a space flight rescue mission, the prospect of STS-300 is as vital to plan for as it is unthinkable to envisage. The team\u2019s commander, Air Force Col. Steven Lindsey said \u00e2\u20ac\u0153It\u2019s a place where we don\u2019t want to go. We\u2019re training for a mission we never want to fly.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Lindsay however, added with some conviction \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I\u2019ll tell you what, if we aren\u2019t absolutely as confident as we possibly can be that we have fixed the tank, which is our primary rationale to go forward, then we have no business in launching.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d <\/font><\/font> <\/p>\n Lindsey has promised his wife and three children if he senses anything unsafe for this mission or any other, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I\u2019ll walk, I won\u2019t fly.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d <\/p>\n As NASA sees it, the possibility of Discovery being covered in foam debris from the fuel tank at liftoff and leaving its seven astronauts stranded at the space station, is very remote. This is due to the extensive improvements in science, technology, checks and testing since the Columbia tragedy two years ago. <\/font><\/p>\n \u2018Hopefully, the probability is so low that we are just covering ourselves,\u2019 said Wayne Hale, deputy director for NASA\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s shuttle program, at Johnson Space Center. <\/font><\/p>\n \u2018We are still going to fly with some risk,\u2019 Hale added. \u2018To characterize it otherwise would be inappropriate.\u2019 <\/font><\/p>\n The likelihood of Atlantis incurring any complications herself on such a rescue mission is an issue which hasn\u2019t gone unnoticed by NASA. Hale remarked \u2018If we had a catastrophic failure with Discovery, we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d need to figure out how to prevent that same problem from occurring on Atlantis.\u2019<\/font> <\/font> NASA\u2019s deputy director for the Shuttle Program then added \u2018We have looked at that and it is a do-able thing but the margins are small. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s better to have a plan, than to not have one.\u2019<\/font> <\/font> Indeed the prospect of STS-300 is a do-able thing. Yet if the mission was to go ahead and worked as planned, Atlantis would return to Earth holding an unprecedented eleven people. But where risks are the very part and parcel of space flight, it is important to acknowledge them but take as many steps as possible to ensure they are reduced.<\/font> <\/font> As Commander Kelly stated \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I\u2019m ready to do it and I figure probably in that one-month period, I wouldn\u2019t go home anymore, probably sleep in my office.\u2019<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Navy Commander Mark Kelly has no hesitation when it comes to the decision of being part of a four-man crew on board Atlantis \u2013 on a mission that everyone at NASA hopes will never be required\u2026.STS-300. Atlantis \u2013 currently in preparations for STS-121 in Orbiter Processing Facilty-1 (OPF) \u2013 is set for a July launch on […]<\/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-42416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42416"}],"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=42416"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42416\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}