Equipping Discovery: New Tools to Return Shuttles to Flight

Posted on: Mar. 3rd, 2005 || Source: space.com | E-mail Article | Print Article

Equipping Discovery: New Tools to Return Shuttles to Flight

When NASA’s Discovery orbiter rockets into space this year as the agency’s first shuttle flight in more than two years, the astronauts aboard will carry a bevy of tools and techniques to ensure their spacecraft is safe.

In addition to a redesigned, camera-laden external fuel tank, the seven astronauts assigned to Discovery’s STS-114 mission are toting with them new instruments to repair the shuttle’s thermal protection system and a sensor-capped extension to the orbiter’s robotic arm.

“We’ll know the health of our vehicle,” said STS-114 pilot Jim Kelly during a recent spacewalk training session at in NASA’s Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory tank at Johnson Space Center (JSC). “Once we have that, we can make intelligent decisions if something were to happen.”

Discovery is currently set to launch no earlier than May 15 of this year to deliver tools and supplies to the orbiting International Space Station and test its own new equipment. The planned space shot is NASA’s first shuttle launch since the loss of the Columbia orbiter, which broke up during reentry, killing its seven astronaut crew on Feb. 1, 2003.

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