30 April 2011

Time for a break

With the KSC media centre closed on Saturday it was a chance to take a break from the space routine and recharge the batteries with an afternoon walk along Cocoa Beach to the resort's small pier.

 

Among the more interesting sights was a beach wedding and the departure of a cruise ship from nearby Port Canaveral.

 

Meanwhile, back at the launch site, Endeavour's countdown was being held at the T-minus 11 hour mark.

News came out late on Saturday afternoon that an APU thermostat had failed tests. If so, this is the better of the two most likely failures and would allow work to proceed towards a new launch attempt on Monday.

Technicians continued working late into the night to test thermostats for Endeavour's APU-1 fuel line heater to help determine what caused it to fail.

NASA flight planners also tweaked Endeavour's target liftoff time for a Monday launch attempt to 2:34 pm (7.34 pm GMT).

If a Monday launch is possible, the countdown would resume at 10:07 pm on Sunday, with fuelling starting at 5:09 am and the crew strapping in at 11:14 am on Monday.

Meet and greet

A few hundred metres - I guess it’s about as close as I’ll ever get to the President of America.

With the launch postponement still fresh, the visit of President Barack Obama and his family to Kennedy Space Center on Friday afternoon gave the assembled media something else to focus on.


I joined some of the TV crews and presenters on the roof of the CBS tower which is a good two storeys high and provided a grandstand view of the space centre landscape.

Obama was arriving on site by Marine helicopter after landing at the nearby Cape Canaveral Air Force Station - and the media cameras were scouring the horizon, all wanting to be first to pick up the imminent arrival.


America doesn’t do things by halves and in the end there were five military helicopters buzzing over KSC as the President swooped in, taking in a view of Endeavour on the pad on the way over.


From our distance it wasn’t easy to identify exactly which helicopter he was in - but then it turned out we’d been dupped anyway.

As we all focussed on the four big helicopters manoeuvring in from the north east behind the giant Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB), Obama’s chopper had discretely moved in at lower level from a westerly direction.

The first family was already on the ground as the four military escort helicopters put on a mini display for the live TV cameras, making it look as though they were landing the President.


So there was President Obama, wife Michelle and their two girls already being shown around the Atlantis Space Shuttle in the Orbiter Processing Facility, in reality not so far from where we were standing.

It would have been the first time in NASA history that a sitting President and his family had witnessed a Shuttle launch.

As well as seeing Atlantis in the VAB, The President and his wife met briefly with Endeavour's crew. Obama told them he was still hoping to get back to Florida for a liftoff.


So, unhappily but not unexpectedly, I didn’t get remotely close enough for a Presidential meet and greet or that all important handshake. The official party remained mostly inside while we media were cocooned on our tower, watching from afar in the afternoon sunshine.  

29 April 2011

Last minute hitch

 "We will not fly this machine until it is ready - and today it was not ready." These were the words of flight director Mike Leinbach at the end of a press briefing this afternoon following the postponement of the launch of Endeavour.

At the Kennedy Space Center it was a day of highs and lows. Despite the early overcast skies there was optimism and excitement in the air.

Ironically, by the end of the day, it was the weather that was cooperating and the technology that had gone arry. An hour before the scheduled launch time clear blue skies had returned making perfect conditions for liftoff.


The Shuttle team had worked hard through the previous night, performing the Rotating Service Structure retraction at the launch pad shortly before midnight to leave Endeavour bathed in bright arch lights, looking pristine and ready to go.

The milestone in preparing the Shuttle for launch came some five hours later than planned but the team still managed to start fuelling on time first thing in the morning.

From an outside perspective it seemed as though things were all going to plan - but behind closed doors the team had been alerted at around 9 am to a potential problem with a heater associated with the Shuttle's hydraulic power system.

Blissfully unaware of the unfolding situation, things continued as normal and I was among about 150 of the reporters and photographers present signed up to witness the crew walkout at the start of their journey to the launch pad.

Before being allowed on the NASA buses to transport us to the viewing point all bags and equipment had to be placed in a line for inspection by an army sniffer dog. This is standard practice when being taken to any secure KSC area.


A drive of several miles brought us to the Operations and Checkout building where the astronaut crew had been quarantined in their quarters since arriving two days previously.

We had a wait of about 45 minutes, a security helicopter with a machine gunner positioned in the open door swooping overhead. When it began to hover above at about midday we knew the crew, dressed in their orange flight suits, were about to appear.


After posing for photos they were off in the silver Astrovan with military escort to the launch pad. The iconic Astrovan has been used to transport crews to launch pads at KSC since the days of the Apollo Moon programme.

We’re back on the buses in a few minutes and head along the same route back towards the press centre area. But, bizarrely, after a mile or so, we see blue flashing lights coming in the opposite direction - closely followed by a speeding Astrovan.

It could mean only one thing - the launch had been aborted and the crew were on their way back to their quarters. In the next few seconds word came through via Twitter and text message confirming a postponement.

The Shuttle has three Auxiliary Power Units (APUs) that provide hydraulic power to steer the vehicle during ascent and entry. NASA’s launch commit criteria and flight rules require all three APUs to be fully operational for launch.

Endeavour's orange external fuel tank had to be drained of more than 500,000 gallons of liquid hydrogen and oxygen - a process taking about 24 hours - before engineers could access the area and evaluate the issue with APU 1. The only option was to postpone the launch for at least 72 hours.

A bird's eye view

Happy wedding day! A truly wonderful occasion as I watched on CNN over breakfast here in Florida. Even the majesty of a Space Shuttle launch won’t be able to match this for a once in a lifetime event!

It’s an overcast morning with a few spots of rain as I arrived at KSC about 8.30 am. They are predicting the weather fronts will clear in time for this afternoon’s launch.

Already the roads down to the coast were nose to tail with traffic streaming in to get a viewing point. Many have been camping out overnight to get prime spots.

Here are a few photos taken as I arrived to show you the scene so far. The osprey family really have a bird's eye view of everything going on but I think they would prefer to be left in peace!


 
 
 

28 April 2011

Back on track

What with wildfires and electrical storms, nature seems to be throwing the lot at Endeavour this time around. The storm was truly spectacular and lasted for several hours - but thankfully it was nothing like the deadly tornado that devestated Alabama the night before. 


The lengthy lightning alert at Kennedy Space Center halted the countdown activities at pad 39A for several hours - the all-clear was eventually sounded at 1130 pm local time and teams got back to work on readying Endeavour for its launch tomorrow at 3:47 pm in the afternoon.

As you can see from the picture above it didn't look so good for most of the evening - though it was spectacular to watch! By the way, the pic below it is me taking one of the fire pictures yesterday afternoon. I spotted it on the nasaspaceflight.com website.


Meanwhile, the weather forecast for launch day continues to be quite favourable, though the chances for a weather violation at launch time have increased slightly to 30 from 20 percent yeseterday.

The primary concerns are a low-cloud ceiling and a crosswind ‘violation’ at the Shuttle Landing Facility, the runway that would be used if Endeavour needed to return in an emergency straight after launch.

Waiting for storm to pass

It’s just before 9 pm and we’re in the KSC press centre to see if the launch pad retraction will still go ahead tonight following lightening and thunder in an early evening storm.

The latest it can be to maintain tomorrow’s launch is around 1030 pm - technicians are out at the pad now checking to see if there has been any lightening or storm damage.


They are also reviewing the weather forecast for the night to see if it will be safe to proceed and then to start fuelling the giant external tank.


If things can’t start by late this evening then tomorrow’s launch could be postponed.

Praying for clear skies

Arrived KSC just before nine. About a 30 minute drive from where I’m staying on Cocoa Beach. The car temperature gauge was reading 82F as I pulled into the car park at press centre.

Had dinner last evening wth Ken Kremer and some Dutch writers, and a journalist with Scientific American magazine. One of the Dutch guys, Jacob Kuiper, works for the weather service in Holland.

Very interesting guy who certainly knows his altostratus from his cumulonimbus - and a lot more besides, including volcanic ash clouds and the spread of radiation in the atmosphere from the Japanese nuclear reactors.

Back to the Shuttle, he told me that if the skies over the UK are clear tomorrow evening then the Space Shuttle ground-track will bring it across England.

So, given the right conditions, the Shuttle (and the separated external tank) should be visible in the sky between 18 and 20 minutes (9.05 pm BST) after launch.

Watch the launch live on NASA TV, have a cuppa and then pop outside to see Endeavour passing overhead with its crew of six. How cool would that be?

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