Sta per finire un'era

[Ospite intruder]

I 7 astronauti del Columbia, disintegratosi in volo nel 2003, persero conoscenza pochi secondi dopo che lo shuttle divento' ingovernabile. E' quanto emerge dal rapporto degli investigatori della Nasa sull'incidente, secondo cui l'equipaggio del Columbia, cinque uomini e due donne, 'non aveva nessuna possibilita' di sopravvivere'. L'incidente alla navetta spaziale, a 20 km di altezza sopra il Texas, avvenne per il distacco di una delle ceramiche di protezione.

 

http://www.ansa.it/site/notizie/awnplus/sc..._131169893.html

[Takumi_Fujiwara]

Per chi sa l'inglese e non teme i tomi voluminosi.

Il rapporto dell'inchiesta.

 

http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/298870main_SP-2008-565.pdf

[-{-Legolas-}-]

http://www.ansa.it/site/notizie/awnplus/sc..._131169893.html

 

Grazie Takumi, anche perchè il link attuale al tempo della sua pubblicazione messo da Intuder, non è più raggiungibile mi pare.

 

Estrapolo dal tuo link

 

Key Recommendations

• Future spacecraft suits and seat restraints should use state-of-the-art technology in an integrated

solution to minimize crew injury and maximize crew survival in off-nominal acceleration

environments. Inertial reels should be evaluated for appropriateness of design for off-nominal

scenarios.

• Helmets should provide head and neck protection in off-nominal dynamic load conditions. The

current space shuttle inertial reels should be manually locked at the first sign of an off-nominal

situation.

• A team of crew escape instructors, flight directors, and astronauts should be assembled to assess

orbiter procedures in the context of ascent, deorbit, and entry contingencies.

• Future spacecraft should be evaluated while still in the design phase for dynamics and entry

thermal and aerodynamic loads during a vehicle LOC for adequate integration into development,

design, and crew training.

• Future crewed spacecraft vehicle design should account for vehicle LOC contingencies to

maximize the probability of crew survival.

Modificato 9 Gennaio 2009 da -{-Legolas-}-

[Ospite intruder]

Per chi sa l'inglese e non teme i tomi voluminosi.

Il rapporto dell'inchiesta.

 

http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/298870main_SP-2008-565.pdf

 

 

Un grazie anche da me, in effetti il link dell'Ansa dev'essere a tempo, passato qualche giorno scade e comunque leggere qualcosa di meno sintetico fa sempre piacere (si fa per dire, visto l'argomento).

[F-14]

STS-119

 

il lancio è previsto per il 12 Febbraio 2009 alle ore 7:31 a.m. EST. Dalla posizione di lancio LC-39A

 

 

STS:

Discovery

 

Equipaggio:

* Dominic A. Antonelli - Pilota

* Lee Archambault - Commandante

* Joseph M. Acaba - 1° specialista di missione

* Steven R. Swanson - 2° specialista di missione

* Richard R. Arnold - 3° specialista di missione

* John L. Phillips - 4° specialista di missione

 

Equipaggio ISS Expedition 18 in partenza:

* Koichi Wakata (3) - Ingegnere di volo presso ISS - JAXA

Equipaggio ISS Expedition 18 in ritorno:

 

* Sandra Magnus (2) - Ingegnere di volo presso ISS - NASA

 

 

Target of mission:

 

Due sono gli obiettivi di questa missione:

-il primo è il normale cambio dell'equipaggio ISS

-il secondo sicuramente più laborioso è il montaggio del segmento S6 (caricato nella stiva del Discovery) sulla ISS

 

Esperimenti che verranno eseguiti:

-Shuttle Ionospheric Modification with Pulsed Local EXhaust (SIMPLEX)

-Shuttle Exhaust Ion Turbulence Experiments (SEITE)

-Maui Analysis of Upper Atmospheric Injections (MAUI)

-Boundary Layer Transition Detailed Test Objective, l'esperimento consiste nel sollevare di circa 6.5 mm(dato da verificare) una piastra dello scudo termico dell'STS per testare il Boundary Layer Transition

 

 

Segmento S6

 

[F-14]

a causa di un problema a una valvola dell' idrogeno il lancio è stato rinviato al 19 Febbraio...

...la valvola è già stata sostituita ma lo Shuttle necessita di controlli più approfonditi

[Ospite intruder]

Lasciatemi versare una lacrima per un vecchietto che sta per andare in pensione... e non si vede sostituto, l'Orion/CLV sta procedendo in sordina, quindi forse ha dei problemi...

[F-14]

Lasciatemi versare una lacrima per un vecchietto che sta per andare in pensione... e non si vede sostituto, l'Orion/CLV sta procedendo in sordina, quindi forse ha dei problemi...

 

possibile che sia la crisi economica?

__________________________________________

 

lo Shuttle ha subito un ulteriore ritardo, il lancio è dato per il 22 febbraio( versione ottimistica).

Sottoaccusa ci sono sempre le valvole dell' idrogeno che potrebbero rompersi durante il viaggio...si sta pensando di riprogettare le valvole.

Questo ovviamente causerà un nuovo ritardo "provocato" da un nuovo progetto, nuovi disegni, nuove costruzioni, nuovi collaudi,ecc...

 

 

Domanda:

dopo 123 lanci è possibile che il problema si sia presentato solo ora?

 

le valvole incriminate dovrebbero essere queste (non sono sicuro che sia giusta la foto):

Modificato 11 Febbraio 2009 da F-14

[FrancescoBaracca]

E fino ad adesso cosa avevano fatto con quelle valvole?

Modificato 12 Febbraio 2009 da FrancescoBaracca

[Ospite intruder]

Mi viene il dubbio che vogliano tirare lo Shuttle oltre la data del ritiro, con la scusa di riprogettare questo o quello...

[F-14]

la situazione potrebbe vedersi anche dal lato opposto...ovvero:

tentano di trovare più problemi per pensionare lo shuttle...

comunque in caso di riprogettazione delle valvole, si parla che passeranno due mesi...

saranno mesi di fuoco per la NASA che deve completare 3 missioni in 3 mesi e mezzo...

[Ospite intruder]

la situazione potrebbe vedersi anche dal lato opposto...ovvero:

tentano di trovare più problemi per pensionare lo shuttle...

comunque in caso di riprogettazione delle valvole, si parla che passeranno due mesi...

saranno mesi di fuoco per la NASA che deve completare 3 missioni in 3 mesi e mezzo...

 

 

Dovrebbero farcela... comunque so che negli USA sempre più persone, enti e altro, chiedono il rinvio del pensionamento del vecchietto, o, almeno, di mantenerne due in servizio...

[Ospite intruder]

E' stato rinviato per la terza volta il lancio della navetta Discovery verso la Stazione spaziale internazionale. La partenza e' prevista ora per il 27 febbraio. Lo ha annunciato la Nasa. Inizialmente in programma per il 12 febbraio, il volo del Discovery era stato spostato al 19 e poi al 22 febbraio. La decisione della Nasa e' stata determinata dalla volonta' di avere piu' tempo per valutare i problemi connessi alle valvole dei serbatoi di carburante.

 

http://www.ansa.it/site/notizie/awnplus/sc..._114325407.html

[Ospite intruder]

Quarto rinvio per il primo lancio dell'anno di uno space shuttle da parte della Nasa. L'ennesimo stop e' arrivato per il persistere dei problemi alle valvole dei serbatoi di carburante.La partenza dello shuttle Discovery era gia' stata rimandata 3 volte e fissata al 27 febbraio,per un volo di 14 giorni destinato a portare un set di pannelli solari alari alla Stazione spaziale internazionale (Iss). Non e' stata ancora fissata una nuova data.

 

http://www.ansa.it/site/notizie/awnplus/mo..._121308381.html

[Ospite intruder]

Dopo quattro rinvii, la Nasa ha fissato la data del 12 marzo per il lancio del prossimo Shuttle Discovery. Il lancio, il primo dei cinque previsti quest'anno, era stato bloccato a causa del timore che una valvola del carburante potesse rompersi e danneggiare gravemente l'astronave.

 

http://www.ansa.it/site/notizie/awnplus/sc..._126311054.html

 

 

Che sia la volta buona? Quasi mi vergogno a continuare a postare la notizia del lancio e poi del rinvio, sembra di prendere in giro chi legge...

[Ospite intruder]

La telenovela Discovery continua:

 

 

NASA will not attempt to launch the shuttle Discovery to the International Space Station before March 15, after scrubbing a launch attempt March 11 following a ground equipment leak on Pad 39A.

 

Space agency technicians detected the leak near a line that carries gaseous hydrogen from the shuttle's external tank into the pad and up to the flame stack, where it is burned off. The leak appears to be at a fixture known as the ground umbilical carrier plate, where the gaseous hydrogen line enters the tank near the top of the port side solid rocket booster.

 

The STS-119 mission management team believes the leak is on the outside of the plate, and may seal itself if the tank is refilled with liquid hydrogen. But if it is inside the plate, there is at least the potential that it can't be fixed at the pad.

 

Discovery must get off the pad by March 16 to avoid a conflict with an upcoming Russian Soyuz mission to deliver Expedition 19 crew members to the station. If Discovery can't be launched before the "Soyuz cutout," the mission will slip into April. The leak was detected about 20 minutes before crews would have finished filling the liquid hydrogen tank for a 9:20 p.m. liftoff March 11. The tank was later drained, but can be refilled in time for a 24-hour turnaround.

 

Discovery is poised to deliver the fourth and final U.S.-built solar array wing for the space station, as well as a replacement urine recycler.

 

http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/sto...p;channel=space

[-{-Legolas-}-]

Ho il sospetto che la maggior parte dei tempi di approntamento della navetta sia spesa a fare il walkaround per controllare tutte le anomalie note e non.

[Ospite intruder]

NASA technicians are performing a detailed inspection of shuttle Discovery's leaky hydrogen fueling hardware, and while they have noticed a "slight nick" in one seal, they can't yet say for sure that was the culprit that caused a March 11 launch scrub, according to Shuttle Launch Director Mike Leinbach.

 

The leak was discovered near a fuel line in which excess hydrogen is vented from the orbiter's external tank back to the pad to be burned off (Aerospace DAILY, March 12). Regardless of whether or not the team finds the source of the leak, all the seals in the line will be replaced in preparation for the next launch attempt, scheduled for 7:43:44 p.m. March 15.

 

Tanking of Discovery would start at 10:18 a.m. that morning and the crew would enter the orbiter at about 4 p.m. If the leak re-occurs, it would be expected to happen near the end of the tanking process, as it did on March 11. If tanking is normal, launch will proceed as normal and the leak will be filed away as an unexplained anomaly, Leinbach said during a press briefing at Kennedy Space Center March 13.

 

Weather looks good for launch, with only a 20 percent chance of a weather-related scrub. If the shuttle launches on time, it will embark on a 13-day mission to deliver the International Space Station's (ISS) fourth and final solar array, as well as a replacement urine processor.

 

STS-119 originally was scheduled to include four spacewalks, but one will have to be dropped as a result of the launch delay, so that Discovery can depart the ISS before the next station crew arrives separately on a Russian Soyuz. The reason for the so-called "Soyuz cutout" is because the ISS can't handle two extra crews visiting at once.

 

If the launch slips to Monday, March 16, the mission will be shortened to 12 days and will only include two spacewalks. If it slips to Tuesday, the mission will lose yet another day and there will be only one spacewalk. Deferred spacewalks will have to be carried out by the station crew.

 

The weather forecast gets progressively worse past Sunday, with a 30 percent chance of a scrub Monday, and 60 percent on Tuesday as a front moves into the area. If Discovery can't launch Tuesday, it must wait until April to try again.

 

The U.S. Air Force has agreed to put the launch of the second Wideband Global Satcom (WGS) military communications satellite on hold while the shuttle tries to launch. The WGS flight on an Atlas V had been scheduled for March 14 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

 

 

http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/sto...p;channel=space

[Ospite intruder]

Alleluia!

 

 

The space shuttle Discovery is en route to the International Space Station, after a spectacular twilight launch that came more than a month later than originally planned.

 

Discovery soared into the darkening sky over the Florida coast, lifting on the power of its three main engines and two solid-fuel boosters in an ascent delayed since Feb. 12 by two different technical issues. The hardware performed as required tonight, and the weather was almost perfect.

 

Packed into the orbiter's payload bay is the S6 truss element, the final length of the main backbone of the ISS, and the last of four 240-foot-long solar array wings built in the U.S. to provide power for the six person crew set to reach the station in May. Launch of the solar array wing, and a replacement urine recycler packed in Discovery's middeck, will make support of the doubled crew and the scientific experiments they will conduct much simpler in the months ahead.

 

At the controls when Discovery lifted off at 7:43 p.m. EDT were Mission Commander Lee Archambault, a USAF colonel making his second spaceflight, and Navy Cdr. Tony Antonelli, the pilot, making his first flight. Also on board were missions specialists Joseph Acaba and Richard Arnold, both making their first flights; John Phillips, making his third flight, and Steve Swanson, on his second flight. Veteran Japanese astronaut Kiochi Wakata, making his third flight, rounds out the crew up to the ISS, where he will become the first astronaut from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) to take up residence. He will replace NASA's Sandra Magnus, who has been in orbit since Nov. 16, 2008, and will return on Discovery.

 

Magnus' space stay may be a day shorter than she expected, depending on weather at landing. Because Discovery's launch was scrubbed March 11 late in the countdown, the nominal mission will be 13 days instead of the originally planned 14. NASA shortened the duration to get the orbiter away from the station before a Russian Soyuz arrives with the next station crew, in keeping with standard operating procedure.

 

As a result, one of the four spacewalks originally planned for the docked portion of the mission has been cancelled. Station managers say the work that Discovery spacewalkers would have done can be handled by the station crew during the "stage" when no vehicle is docked there.

 

 

 

 

www.aviationweek.com

Modificato 16 Marzo 2009 da intruder

[Ospite intruder]

Events Overtake NASA Acceleration Study

 

By Frank Morring, Jr. aviationweek.com

 

 

Obama administration delays in setting out a clear space policy, with funding to go with it, appear to have rendered NASA plans to narrow the post-shuttle "gap" in U.S. human access to space out of date before they could be implemented.

 

A Constellation Program Acceleration Study prepared last year and released April 20 finds the U.S. space agency $1.9 billion short of the funds it needs to meet an internal initial operational capability (IOC) target date of September 2014. That milestone means sending astronauts to the International Space Station with an Ares I crew launch vehicle carrying an Orion crew exploration vehicle.

 

But the needed funds have not been forthcoming, and some of the activities the acceleration study suggested could increase confidence in meeting that date - including an extra flight-test - have been ruled out.

 

Factors cited in the internal NASA study as contributing to the shortfall include undefinitized changes in the Orion contract; the shift from land to water landing and its effect on Orion reusability, and the need for additional testing in the J2-X upper stage engine development program.

 

The study, which included managers and engineers inside and outside the Constellation Program that is building Ares I and Orion, also found a number of unfunded technical-baseline changes that contributed to the shortage of funds, including a phased-array communication system, high voltage power system, first stage nozzle extension and ongoing efforts to mitigate the thrust oscillation imparted to the Ares I/Orion stack as its solid fuel first stage nears burnout.

 

"Due to these factors, achieving the current baseline schedule ... with a September 2014 IOC is high programmatic risk and considered not achievable with the corresponding current technical content, cost and schedule," the report states.

 

NASA no longer carries the September 2014 IOC date, and is working to a public "commitment date" of March 2015, which already has been found optimistic by the Congressional Budget Office and the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel.

 

To improve confidence in the 2014 IOC, the acceleration panel report recommends restoring program reserves and deferred design and development work; early procurement of long lead items, and an accelerated flight-test program including an additional ascent abort test.

 

That test, designated Ares I-X prime, already has been rejected by top Constellation managers as too expensive under the present budget. Nor will it be possible to accelerate the Ares I-X flight-test given delays from last summer in getting the final shuttle mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope off the pad, clearing a backup pad at Kennedy Space Center for conversion to the Ares I-X configuration.

 

As a sign that the acceleration study has been overtaken by events, the report suggested "a few key decisions" that should have been taken before April 1, including "notifying contractors to prepare for staffing ramp-up, and program pre-planning efforts for acceleration before the turn-on date."

 

NASA probably will not send a Fiscal 2010 budget request to Capitol Hill until early next month, and so far has not determined how to spend the roughly $1 billion in stimulus package funding it has received. Nor has President Barack Obama named an administrator to succeed Michael Griffin, who left on Inauguration Day and has been replaced on an acting basis by Christopher Scolese, formerly the agency's chief engineer and associate administrator.

 

Instead, the agency has been "matching budget and schedule" based on available funding, according to a Constellation Program spokesman.

[Ospite intruder]

(ansa) Il cannocchiale di Galileo vola nello spazio con lo Shuttle: partira' l'11 maggio dal Kennedy space center in Florida.Una missione della Nasa portera' in orbita una copia del famoso strumento scientifico, fornita dall'istituto e museo di Storia della scienza di Firenze. Gli Usa celebreranno cosi' lo scienziato toscano nel quarto centenario dalle sue prime scoperte celesti. A portare il cannocchiale in orbita sara' un astronauta di origini italiane, Michael Massimino.

[Ospite intruder]

Panel To Review Spaceflight Policy

 

By Frank Morring, Jr. aviationweek.com

 

President Obama's long-term plan for human spaceflight will have an asterisk next to it until the end of the summer at the earliest, while a panel headed by former Lockheed Martin CEO Norman Augustine reviews it at the request of the White House.

 

Augustine, the 73-year-old former CEO of Lockheed Martin, will lead a mixed panel of NASA insiders and outside experts to review the Bush-era "Vision for Space Exploration" adopted after the Columbia accident in 2003.

 

Among topics to be covered will be narrowing the post-shuttle gap in delivering crews to the International Space Station (ISS) on U.S. vehicles; pushing human exploration beyond low Earth orbit to the moon and beyond, and boosting commercial human spaceflight, according to John Holdren, Obama's science adviser.

 

"We have a new administration and a difficult budget situation," Holdren tells Aviation Week. "I think any administration in this situation would want to review the options and try to assure itself that it's looked at everything, thought of everything, compared the pros and cons, because quite clearly there are more things we'd like to do than we can do under the existing budgets and in the available time."

 

The detailed $18.7 billion Obama budget request for NASA in fiscal 2010 released May 7 adds $630.4 million to exploration in FY '09-10, but that includes $400 million from the economic stimulus package adopted for FY '09. In the three years after that the request actually drops $3.760 billion from the comparable out-year figures in the final Bush administration budget request last year, for a net loss to exploration of $3.130 billion.

 

Without the stimulus-package money, that is very close to the $3.5 billion former administrator Michael Griffin complained had been cut "over the next four years" by "career civil servant staff" instead of elected officials.

 

That could change once the Augustine panel finishes what will be known officially as the "Review of United States Human Space Flight Plans" no earlier than the end of August. At that point NASA may revise its FY '10 funding request to Congress to reflect the panel's work, according to Christopher Scolese, the agency's acting administrator.

 

"Clearly, if we're on the wrong path, we should change," Scolese says. "If you're asking me if I think we're on the wrong path - No, I don't."

 

Scolese and Doug Cooke, associate administrator for exploration systems, says the U.S. space agency will continue with its plans for exploration while the review is under way, using the extra funding in FY '09-10 to buy long-lead items and accelerate testing.

 

But they don't plan to initiate any new contracts for the lunar exploration phase of NASA's plan - including study work on the Ares V heavy lift rocket and Altair lunar lander - until the Augustine panel finishes its work.

 

The out-year funding cut, if it stands, is approximately what NASA hopes to spend on lunar exploration development over that period.

 

In its 1990 report, the Advisory Committee on the Future of the U.S. Space Program that Augustine headed recommended setting the human exploration of Mars as a long-term goal, with the moon as a stepping stone on the way. It also called for a "mission to planet Earth" focusing on the environment, and a significantly expanded technology development effort to upgrade U.S. space transportation systems.

[Ospite intruder]

ansa, ieri, 2020: La Nasa ha lanciato da Cape Canaveral in Florida lo shuttle Atlantis con 7 astronauti a bordo verso il telescopio spaziale Hubble. La missione, considerata rischiosa, ha l'obiettivo di fare una serie di lavori di manutenzione del telescopio, in attivita' ormai da 19 anni. Gli astronauti avranno il compito, tra l'altro, di sostituire batterie, giroscopi, telecamere e altro materiale di cui Hubble e' dotato, in modo di allungare di altri dieci anni il funzionamento del telescopio.

[-{-Legolas-}-]

Grazie delle news sempre aggiornate.

[Ospite intruder]

Qualcosa di più completo da aviationweek. Avrei potuto mettere questo materiale ieri sera, ma si era inchiodata la connessione al sito (tutto il resto funzionava, quando tentavo di collegarmi al forum dava di matto):

 

Shuttle Atlantis lifted off from Launch Pad 39A in picture-perfect weather at 2:01 p.m. EDT May 11, kicking off the fifth and final servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope.

 

Veteran astronaut Scott Altman commands STS-125, with retired Navy Capt. Gregory Johnson serving as pilot. Aboard as mission specialists are veteran astronauts John Grunsfeld - making his third trip to Hubble, and Mike Massimino, along with first-time astronauts Andrew Feustel, Michael Good and Megan McArthur.

 

Shuttle Endeavour, meanwhile, is poised at Launch Pad 39B, ready to lift off within a week of Atlantis to conduct a rescue mission if on-orbit inspections reveal any damage to Atlantis that make it unable to safely re-enter Earth's atmosphere. The rescue mission, designated STS-400, is necessary because Atlantis will be unable to reach the refuge of the International Space Station from Hubble's orbit.

 

Loading of Atlantis' external tank with 500,000 pounds of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen propellants began at 4:41 a.m.

 

The highest scientific priorities for the seven-person STS-125 crew during the 11-day Servicing Mission 4 (SM4) are the installation of the new Wide Field Camera 3, which will replace the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2, and the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph, which replaces the Corrective Optics Space Telescope Axial Replacement (COSTAR). COSTAR was the original "contact lens" installed to correct Hubble's vision during the first servicing mission in 1993, but is no longer needed because all of Hubble's replacement instruments already compensate for the flawed optics.

 

The astronauts also will repair Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), which was crippled by an electrical short in 2007, and the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS), which has been inoperative since a power failure in 2004.

 

A late addition to the schedule is the installation of a replacement Science Instrument Command & Data Handling (SI C&DH) unit - a crucial component that commands the telescope's instruments and directs its data before transmission to the ground. In September 2008, just two weeks before STS-125 was originally scheduled to lift off, a malfunction of one of Hubble's Control Unit/Science Data Formatters (CU/SDF) left the SI C&DH only one subsystem failure away from rendering the entire telescope useless. NASA made the decision to put off the mission while a backup SI C&DH was refurbished and tested so it could be installed as well.

 

The astronauts also will replace all six of Hubble's 125-pound batteries with new and improved versions, as well as all six of its stabilizing gyroscopes. Three of Hubble's current gyroscopes have failed, two are operating, and one is serving as a backup. Also slated for replacement is a worn-out Fine Guidance Sensor (FGS), which measures star positions to help the telescope point, as well as some of the insulation that protects Hubble's equipment bays.

 

Finally, the crew will install a new soft capture mechanism that will one day allow a deorbiting module to be autonomously attached to the telescope, permitting safe disposal at the end of its life.

 

After the mission and a few months of checkout tests run by telescope controllers at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., Hubble will be working at its peak, with five operational instruments. The servicing should keep the telescope operating at least through 2014.