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PART 1: Next webchat: April 30 with Bill
Brit NEXT WEBCHAT: APRIL 30 WITH BILL BRITZ
Orbit specialist Bill Britz will be the next guest in the Wednesday online chat series. He works in the main Mission Control room you see on TV. Bill is responsible for controlling and monitoring space shuttle flight trajectories during missions. His chat is scheduled for April 30 from 10-11 a.m. Pacific (1-2 p.m. Eastern). Before attending the chat, we strongly suggest that your students read Bill's biography (with job description). If you plan to chat, you must register for the event. Sign up now by sending a brief email note to rsvp-sto@quest.arc.nasa.gov This RSVP is very important, since it will allow us to ensure that the chatroom does not become too crowded. If you do not register, you will be welcome to observe the chat (but you won't be able to participate). For more details, and for the complete schedule, please visit: http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/space/events/interact.html [Editor's note: Wayne is NASA's manager for Solid Rocket Booster (SRB) Retrieval and Disassembly. The SRBs land in the water and special ships are used to recover them. Since Wayne leads this part of shuttle processing, he is known as "The Admiral." Here is his story for the STS-83 mission.] FETCHING THE STS-83 BOOSTER ROCKETS FROM THE SEA http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/space/team/ranow.html April 2, l997 The NASA Retrieval Ships were prepared and ready to depart on their assigned mission to sail to a predetermined point 142 nautical miles out in the Atlantic Ocean and await the launch of STS-83 when the decision was made to delay one day to install some insulation on pipes inside the Orbiter mid-body. We were already scheduled to have a pre-departure weather briefing with the Launch Operations Director, Landing Recovery Director, Process Integration Director, and the Eastern Range Weather Director, so this meeting occurred as scheduled. The news was good for this time of year when we can expect high winds and rough seas. The meteorologist had forecast relatively calm seas 4 to 6 feet and calm winds in the recovery area. April 3, 1997 After a one day delay, we were ready to set sail from Hangar AF wharf. The ships departed the wharf located at Cape Canaveral Air Station and sailed south to the Port Canaveral Locks where families and friends were waiting to wish a successful bon voyage to the retrieval team which consist of 23 personnel per vessel. This is a special time for the team because they will not see their families again until their return which could be as many as 6 to 9 days. Although a nominal mission lasts 3 days, there is always the chance of more delays, which might extend our time at sea. We transfer ship's power from jet thrusters to main engine propellers and dive bow-first into the rougher-than-predicted Atlantic Ocean. With seas running 6 to 9 feet, the crew and vessels are prepared to weather anything mother nature throws at us. Fortunately, when we entered the gulf stream, the seas subsided and the 12-hour voyage to our mission support position was abnormally pleasant. By the way, the comet Hale-Bopp is spectacular from 140 miles out in the ocean, especially when you combine it with a gorgeous sunset. April 4, 1997 We awake to the smell of bacon cooking in the galley and the sound of the waves splashing against the ship's hull. It's going to be a great day for a shuttle launch, and the retrieval team stands ready to spring into action after liftoff. Part of our mission is to search the SRB impact area for marine traffic and report any contacts to Eastern Range Operations. We do this by radar search, and this time we discovered two fishing boats in the area. One of them was right in the center of the SRB splashdown spot. After our vessel master explained to the fishing boat captain that two 187,000-pound boosters were going to occupy that little spot in the ocean with him six minutes after liftoff, he decided to go fish somewhere else. Launch time was set for 1400 hours but was delayed 20 minutes due to a couple of technical issues. "Liftoff" and the SRBs were on their way to our location as we strained to see the shuttle come into view on the horizon. And come into view it did, like a fireball rising out of the ocean the telltale white column of smoke trailing the boosters up to 156,000 feet where they separate and the shuttle continues on into space. We can clearly see SRB separation and watch the boosters coast upwards to a height of 238,000 feet. There they begin their free fall to 15,820 feet when the nose cap is separated and out pops a pilot parachute which pulls out the drogue parachute which slows the boosters to 250 miles per hour. The drogue parachute and frustrum then separate pulling out the three main parachutes slowing the boosters to 50 miles per hour at splash down. All total from liftoff to splash down takes 415 seconds. "SPLASH DOWN," we check the radar and determine the righthand booster is 10.4 miles away and the lefthand booster is 10.9 miles away from the ships. It takes us one hour to arrive at the hardware strewn around in a two-mile circle. A quick assessment assures us there are two boosters, six main parachutes, two frustums, two drogue parachutes, and two pilot parachutes floating in the water. We begin the task of recovering all the hardware by reeling the parachutes up on some large reels bolted to the deck of the ship and lifting the frustrum out of the water with our ship's crane and placing it on the aft deck. This normally takes about four hours but was extended somewhat due to one parachute that had to be cut free of the booster. The other two parachutes separated at splash down, but it was planned to keep the one parachute attached to prevent damage occurring during rough seas. The next task was to put divers in the water to swim the diver-operated plug down 110 feet and insert it into the booster nozzle. This proved to be more of a problem than normal because the seas were surging and causing the booster to move around erratically. Try to insert a sink stopper in a sink that is upside down and swinging around twenty feet in all directions. Needless to say, after two attempts we were stopped due to lack of daylight. That means we had to baby-sit the boosters till the next day. April 5, 1997 At first light we are preparing for another dive to insert the plug into the nozzle. Hooray, success at last, now we pump air into the empty booster to cause it to rise and float very much like a log. The boosters are now ready to connect the tow wire and begin the twenty-four-hour tow back to Hangar AF. The tow wire is let out to a distance of 1800 feet and the ship's captain plots the course back to Port Canaveral. "SURPRISE," we are 175 nautical miles from the port due to an easterly drift since the boosters splashed down. Better add another 3 hours to our already extended time at sea. April 6, 1997 The ships arrive back to the locks, and there stand our vigilant families and friends, waving, just as glad to see us as though we were gone a year. Another two hours sailing up the Banana river to Hangar AF and we are at last complete with the retrieval mission. Next comes the disassembly part of the operation, but that will be another journal. Stay tuned! [Editor's note: Rick is a design engineer who works on Ground Support Equipment that helps get the shuttle ready to fly. Rick often has several projects at once; currently his big project is the Automated Window Inspection Device (AWID) Project. This will be used during shuttle flow operations to inspect the Orbiter windows for micrometeorite impact damage from previous missions. AWID utilizes video imaging and processing technology to aid the operators in inspecting the windows in a more reliable manner than the current tedious manual method.] Rick Adams http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/space/team/adams.html April 4, l997 Each Orbiter has six outside thermal windows available to the crew to view the forward part of the vehicle, primarily during space operations and landings. These windows are made of fused quartz so that they can withstand the heat of re-entry. Visibility through the windows is affected by the amount of surface haze and defects that occur during the course of normal launch ascent and space operations, and the angle of sunlight that strikes the window. Sunlight that arrives at an angle nearly parallel to the glass may make that window completely useless for viewing because of glare induced in the surface haze. This effect is hazardous to operations when viewing through a particular pane is necessary (during landing operations), as the Orbiter approaches the runway. Haze is believed to be caused by the exhaust from the SRB separation motors when the boosters are released from the Orbiter and External Tank after about two minutes in flight. The types of defects of concern are caused, primarily, by particulate matter in space or micrometeorites impacting the thermal window surface at high speed during launch ascent or on-orbit operations. These particles either blast microscopic pits into the surface, or induce bruises within the body of the glass and create internal cracks that may or may not reach the surface. Depending on the depth of the defect and its location on the window, it may present a hazard to continuing operations, at which point the window is replaced. Both types of defects are difficult to locate by current manual inspection techniques when the window is mounted in place on the Orbiter as it sits in its bay in the Orbiter Processing Facility. The windows can only be inspected after the haze has been removed, because the light reflected from the haze masks the image of small or subsurface defects. Removal of haze requires about a week of work by two technicians, working alternately to relieve fatigue. Manual inspection is tedious, the area where inspectors have to work is awkward to reach, and because of the tedious nature of the work, it requires two inspectors to be present, each of whom works for a short time while the other relaxes. They alternate back and forth, and it takes about eight hours to inspect each pane for both surface and subsurface defects. Each defect identified is marked on a plastic overlay that matches the shape of the pane, and a permanent record maintained of the date each defect is found so that Quality Control can monitor the progression of window damage with time. The Automated Window Inspection Device (AWID) was created to provide a mechanized/partially automated instrument for performing operational inspection of the windows during Orbiter ground processing in order to reduce the possibility of missing a significant defect. AWID performs the function of an operator aide, which allows automated detection and manual imaging of defects without requiring that the operator be located close to the glass. This minimizes the effects of physical and mental fatigue and improves the quality and reliability of the overall inspection process when the windows are inspected while installed on the Orbiter. It takes AWID about three hours to scan a window. AWID is designed to automatically locate window defects and help the operator measure their size and determine other features without first requiring the window's haze to be removed from the windows. Its ability to see through the haze is based on the fact that the polarized return from surface haze is not rotated by the haze material. A polarized filter on the imaging video camera prevents surface return from washing out the rotated return from subsurface damage. Should a defect sufficiently severe to scrap the window be found, the window can be replaced with a new one without having accrued wasted time in cleaning a window that would later be rejected. AWID is still under construction, with delivery of the first system due in June 1997. Two more systems will be built and delivered next year. The project started in June of 1994. [Editor's note: Billy was a mission scientist recently at the California Space Camp. Over the next few weeks we'll share some experiences of various campers, to show that students can take on space roles now before they leave school.] THERE WAS A PROBLEM WITH THE ORBITER April 1, 1997 I was a Mission Scientist. Ground Control had told us there was a problem with the Orbiter and we had to fix the problem by maneuvering it back into position. While we were in the shuttle, we did experiments with crystals. My favorite thing about being on the mission was having the chance to land the space shuttle. I really felt like I had some real power. Steering the shuttle was a great accomplishment for me. I would recommend Space Camp to all of my friends. In the future, I would like to fly the real shuttle into space. I think Space Camp is excellent. I liked the MMU simulator. It turned 90 degrees and made me feel like there was no gravity. [Editor's note: Dale is a mechanical engineer who worked on the CM-1 experiment for STS-83. CM-1 is a combustion science experiment that made its first flight on STS-83. Dale was responsible for testing the experiment after it arrived at KSC to make sure that it would work correctly in the shuttle. During the mission, he monitored the experiment's progress from the ground and helped the astronauts as needed.] GETTING COMBUSTION MODULE-1 READY FOR LAUNCH http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/space/team/sewell.html April 2, 1997 The Combustion Module-1 (CM-1) experiment was designed and built at the Lewis Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio. After CM-1 showed up at KSC, there was still much work to be done getting the experiment ready to fly. When CM-1 arrived, the experiment was installed in the Spacelab module, and power, data, and cooling were connected to the experiment. It was my job to test these connections and make sure that they worked correctly. It may sound easy, but sometimes problems show up where you least expect them. We had to make sure the experiment was getting power and that we could talk to it and understand what it was saying. A good way of looking at it is for you and a friend to build a model car or plane. You build half of the model and your friend builds the other half. Once you each have finished your half, put the two pieces together and see how they fit. If you are lucky, they fit perfectly. If you are not so lucky, the two pieces fit close but not perfect. I had to make sure that CM-1 fit perfectly and that all the connections worked right. Unfortunately for me, while we were testing CM-1 a few problems did come up. Everything fit together all right, but some things did not work like they were supposed to. The most serious problem we discovered was that a small laser used in the experiment kept failing. We weren't sure why this was happening but we did some troubleshooting and discovered that the laser might not work for the mission. So we had to figure out a way of installing a backup laser that we could switch to on orbit, if necessary. We couldn't just replace the laser because of its location in the experiment. In figuring out how to install the backup we had to think about the astronauts and their conditions on orbit, because they would be the ones making the switch. We had to make sure that everything was easy to get to and easy for the astronauts to see. We also had to make sure it would be easy for the astronauts to disconnect the bad laser and be able to connect up to the new laser. After the backup laser was installed, the astronauts looked at our design and asked questions to make sure they understood what might need to be done on orbit. As we were designing and installing the backup laser we were also still checking the primary laser to try and figure out what was wrong with it. We finally decided that the primary laser had a flaw in it when it was built and that this was not a problem with all the lasers, just this particular one. Just before the module was to be installed in the shuttle, the scientists decided they wanted to use the backup laser for the mission and that is the one that was connected to the experiment for flight. [Editor's note: Paul is an associate professor at USC where he researches and teaches mechanical and aerospace engineering. His "moonlighting" job is as a "payload specialist" for STS-83. Payload specialists are not career astronauts; they are people who are selected to fly in space because of their particular scientific or technical expertise in some area that the people in the regular astronaut corps don't possess. Paul is a backup to both the combustion payload specialist and the materials payload specialist. If either one of them couldn't fly for any reason, he would fly in their place.] MONITORING THE SCIENCE EXPERIMENTS FROM THE GROUND
Paul Ronney http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/space/team/ronney.html April 4, 1997 My duties as the Alternate Payload Specialist console position at the Payload Operations Control Center (POCC) in Huntsville are relatively light until a few hours after launch, when Spacelab is activated. About 4 and one-half hours after launch, I watched as the hatch opened (there is a remote-control camera inside Spacelab that allows us on the ground to watch the astronauts come into the lab). Janice Voss and Roger Crouch were scheduled to come in, and everyone expected the veteran Janice to come in first, but instead Roger flew into the lab with a superman leap, a big wave for the camera and a huge smile. Janice followed seconds later with the comment "my, there's so much space in here!" (Spacelab is much bigger than the orbiter's crew compartment). My first shift on console lasted until well into the morning, and I was impressed at how well both Roger and Janice were performing and how much fun they seemed to be having. April 5, 1997 I was awakened Saturday morning by a call from someone on the Combustion Module-1 science team telling me to come in right away because the mission was probably going to end in a couple of days because of a bad fuel cell. Not a good start to the mission. I sped to the POCC just in time to get the gory details at an emergency expected the veteran Janice to come in first, but instead Roger flew into the lab with a superman leap, a big wave for the camera and a huge smile. Janice followed seconds later with the comment "my, there's so much space in here!" (Spacelab is much bigger than the orbiter's crew compartment). My first shift on console lasted until well into the morning, and I was impressed at how well both Roger and Janice were performing and how much fun they seemed to be having. April 5, 1997 I was awakened Saturday morning by a call from someone on the Combustion Module-1 science team telling me to come in right away because the mission was probably going to end in a couple of days because of a bad fuel cell. Not a good start to the mission. I sped to the POCC just in time to get the gory details at an emergency meeting called by the mission manager. While it was not official yet, it looked grim. We were to continue normal operations until an official end of mission was announced. The fuel cells provide the electricity to the orbiter. There are 3 of them, and all must be working for a mission to continue normally. Only once (back in 1981) was a mission cut short because of a fuel cell problem. Only three times in the history of the Space Shuttle program has a mission been cut short, and never by more than 4 days. Our mission would wind up being cut short by 12 days. STATUS OF STS-83 POST-FLIGHT PROCESSING
Below and in the future, we'll provide some details about the post flight work being done after STS-83 and the and subsequent processing of Columbia as it gets ready to fly again. These reports will contain jargon and unfamiliar terms; our intent is not to confuse you, but to provide a glimpse at all the steps involved. Detailed daily reports about Columbia's processing can be found at the NASA Shuttle Status web site at http://www-pao.ksc.nasa.gov/kscpao/status/status.htm Since the last updates-sto message, Columbia's main engines were removed Saturday. Hypergol deservicing activities were completed. Columbia's forward reaction control system was transferred to the Hypergol Maintenance Facility and thruster replacement is in work. The forward reaction control system should return to the OPF in early May to be reinstalled into the orbiter. In the VAB, booster stacking operations continued. Completed work included the left forward mating operations and left booster joint close-outs. The mating of the right aft center segment to the right aft segment was completed; next the right forward center segment was scheduled for transfer to the VAB . Technicians are preparing for postflight work on Columbia's auxiliary power units to be conducted on Saturday. Spacelab reservicing activities continue. STS-83R operational milestones (target dates only) include: - forward reaction control system installation (May 6) - Space Shuttle main engine installation (May 7)
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