Tears in the rain

Torrential rain, thunder and lightening made for an atrocious day at Kennedy Space Center today. Rain doused the Space Shuttle orbiter and two lightning bolts struck on or nearby the launch pad.

Officials said a preliminary assessment found no major problems or systems affected and while additional data reviews were planned, engineers did not expect to need any time-consuming system re-tests.

Forecasters predicted a 70 percent chance of stormy weather triggering a launch delay tomorrow, though the forecast improves slightly to 60 percent ‘no go’ Saturday and then to 40 percent on Sunday.

"Weather is not looking good for launch," shuttle weather officer Kathy Winters told reporters during a morning briefing.

"As you can see outside, the clouds have rolled in, we're starting to see some showers. We even had a thunderstorm show up this morning. So we are expecting more of this for the next couple of days."

The appalling conditions didn’t prevent NASA going ahead with the retraction of the Rotating Service Structure protecting Atlantis on launch pad 39A. It began rolling back at 2:38 pm, about 30 minutes later than planned.

Rain was pounding KSC at the time and a couple of hundred media photographers, including myself, were drenched as we waited in the open for security checks before being bused out to the launch pad to see the Shuttle.

With temperatures in the mid-80s Fahrenheit it was steamy and humid as we viewed Atlantis from the crawler-way which leads up to the launch pad. As well as the media the mosquitos were out in force.

A three hour tanking operation to fill the giant external tank with fuel was scheduled to begin at 2 am Friday morning after an assessment of the weather conditions by mission managers.

Thunder and lightening

With just 45 minutes to go before the planned roll back of the launch tower currently encapsulating Atlantis, mission managers and weather experts are still deciding if they should proceed.

The KSC site was doused in torrential rain with thunder and lightening around midday and safety rules do not permit tower roll back if there are electric storms in the vicinity.

They have between six and seven hours leeway in the schedule to perform the manoeuvre if they are to keep on course for a launch attempt tomorrow morning.

In NASA-speak we are still in a ‘Phase 2 Lightening Alert’ which means everyone is confined to buildings and shouldn't be walking out in the open.

Storm clouds brew

A hole may need to open in the clouds at just the right time for Atlantis to fly on the final Shuttle mission tomorrow morning.

At Wednesday’s pre-launch briefing to the media NASA managers said the weather forecast had worsened overnight to a 70 percent chance of stormy conditions that would postpone the planned 11:26 am (16:26 BST) launch.

But in the past Space Shuttles have blasted off from Kennedy Space Center with much worse odds. "It could be pouring rain everywhere in the county, and if we get that hole in the right spot at the right time, we can go," said Mike Moses, NASA’s launch integration manager.

He described Atlantis as being in "fantastic shape" for launch as the so far trouble-free countdown continued with teams loading chemical reactants into Atlantis’ power-producing fuel cell system.

Three orbiter fuel cells will generate electricity for Atlantis and its four person crew during the 12 day mission to stock the International Space Station with food and spare parts.

At 2 pm today, crews plan to swing open the rotating gantry at launch pad 39A to reveal Atlantis, poised for the Shuttle programme’s 135th launch in 30 years.

Fuelling of the craft’s 15-story external tank should then begin about 12 hours later — assuming managers give the go-ahead after a weather briefing at 1:30 am Friday morning.

"I only know of one way to make it a 100 percent no-go forecast, and that’s to not put propellant in the tank," said Moses.

If the weather doesn’t cooperate Friday, the outlook improves slightly Saturday and Sunday.
After that, NASA plans to pause until at least July 16 to let the Air Force launch a satellite from Cape Canaveral — but if it comes to the crunch the two parties might negotiate freeing up most of next week for Atlantis.

But launch director Mike Leinbach said his teams weren’t hoping for delays. "Friday is game day for us, so we don’t want to wait until Saturday," he said. "We want to play the game Friday."

Also playing on managers' minds are the huge crowds expected on Florida’s Space Coast to view the final ascent — and the impact that mass of people could have on launch operations.

Local police expect half-to-three-quarters of a million people travelling to the area and, because of the heavy traffic that would be generated, Leinbach is reserving the option to skip a Saturday launch try out of concern the launch team could not get home and make it back to the spaceport in time for a 24 hour turnaround.

Weather officer Kathy Winters said she expected conditions to improve over the weekend, with a 40 percent chance of good weather on Saturday and a 60 percent chance Sunday.

The final countdown

There could hardly be a more appropriate soundtrack to events at Kennedy Space Center this week. ‘The Final Countdown’, a rock song originally released by the Swedish band ‘Europe’ in 1986, reached number one in 25 countries, including the UK. In the United States the song peaked at number eight.

The clock has been ticking for the Space Shuttle programme for some years now but yesterday the last ever countdown began in earnest when the launch clock at Kennedy Space Center — the giant digital display familiar to TV viewers the world over — began counting down from 43 hours. When it reaches zero, Atlantis will be on its way.

But during a countdown the time on the clock does not translate to actual time — considerably more than 43 hours will elapse between countdown and liftoff. In reality some 70 hours separate the start-up of the countdown clock at 1:00 pm yesterday and the planned launch of the Shuttle at 11:26 this Friday.

The reason for the difference in timekeeping is a series of planned ‘holds’ — built-in pauses that allow launch managers to take stock of the mission's status and respond to changing conditions.

In all, a Shuttle launch countdown contains seven holds, which take place when the countdown clock reads 27 hours, 19 hours, 11 hours, six hours, three hours, 20 minutes and nine minutes.

A specific list of safety checks (inspect external fuel tanks at T-minus 11 hours), launch-preparation tasks (clear launch pad and surrounding area of personnel at T-minus six hours) and decision points (final ‘go/no-go’ poll among launch managers at T-minus nine minutes) are addressed before ending the hold and proceeding into the countdown.

For this final Shuttle mission, designated STS-135, the planned holds range in duration from 10 minutes to 14 hours.

Only after the countdown clock resumes following the final hold at T-minus nine minutes will it reflect the actual amount of time remaining until liftoff.

　
　

Enterprise visits Stansted

One of the most exciting assignments I was ever given as a young local newspaper reporter back in the early 1980s was to cover the visit to Stansted airport of the Space Shuttle Enterprise, riding piggyback on its 747 carrier aircraft.

It was in the early days of the Space Shuttle programme and NASA had flown Enterprise round Europe as a PR stunt, accompanied by the commander of the first ever flight John Young who, with Bob Crippen, had flown the orbiter’s maiden voyage on 12 April 1981.

The stop-off on a Sunday afternoon at Stansted airport north of London attracted thousands of people eager like myself to catch a glimpse of the new spaceship.

Strictly speaking it was not ‘local’ news for the Lincolnshire Free Press/Spalding Guardian weekly newspapers - but my Editor David Young knew it would attract many visitors from our area and was astute enough not to curb a young hack’s enthusiasm.

As a newly qualified reporter with a mainstay diet of local courts, councils and police work I could hardly of dreamed that the 80 mile trip to Stansted would sow the seeds for a career that would one day take me to many of the iconic space centres of the world, including Kennedy Space Center (KSC) itself to witness the countdown and launch of Space Shuttles.

The piece I wrote for the Lincolnshire Free Press — in those days a traditional broadsheet paper owned by East Midlands Allied Press (EMAP) — reflected the optimism surrounding the fledgling Shuttle programme.

Dr Hans Mark, deputy director of NASA at the time, predicted that by the mid-1990s there would be almost one Shuttle mission per week and that before the end of the century several thousand people would have flown in space.

Of course, in the end things didn’t quite turn out quite as he and many others had predicted.

So, some 28 years later, after collecting my press badges and passing through security on a sultry July morning, I find myself driving up the long approach road to NASA’s KSC.

The giant Vehicle Assembly Building dominates the view ahead and round the corner somewhere a Space Shuttle stands on launch pad 39A ready to make history.

Mademoiselle Rouge

Thank you Sir Richard - Branson of course - for a ride on one of your brand new Airbus A330-300 aeroplanes across the Atlantic today.

Virgin Atlantic introduced the first of its new A330 aircraft ‘Beauty Queen’ on the Manchester to Orlando route just this April, with the second ‘Mademoiselle Rouge’ following on the Gatwick-Orlando schedule from early May.

According to Virgin, the A330 deliver savings in emissions and fuel consumption, and offers customers a ‘cutting-edge product which will transform their flying experience’.

Within two years Virgin will be flying 10 of the long range twin-engined aircraft which are among the most efficient aircraft in their class today. All will be powered by Rolls-Royce Trent 700 engines manufactured in Derby, UK.

The new planes, which will use 15 per cent less fuel per seat than the airline's A340-300 aircraft, also feature a revolutionary new in-flight entertainment system created by Panasonic. It uses the latest touch screen technology and features over 300 hours of content.

And so was my flying experience transformed by Mademoiselle Rouge? I have to say it was a pretty good flight all round, with lower noise levels and much improved seating arrangements in economy class.

As for the entertainment system - that’s pretty cool too with 65 of the latest films to watch ‘on demand’, and a bewildering range of TV programmes, news flashes, music and games to keep you glued to the screen.

But, no matter how good the ‘facilities’, after nine hours in the air I’m more than ready to leave the confines of an A330.

Ninety minutes after the smoothest of landings I was through customs and car hire, heading out in the bright evening sunshine to the east coast of Florida where a craft of an altogether different era is waiting patiently on its launch pad.

Dollars for Russia

The UK was just finishing a glorious Easter weekend and entering the final run-up to Royal wedding madness when I started this blog on 26 April en route to witness the penultimate launch of the US Space Shuttle.

Now, a couple of months or so on and with Endeavour’s spectacular mission done and dusted, we are entering the final countdown for the very last Shuttle launch.

This time it is the turn of the United States to kickoff countdown week with today’s 4th July public holiday to celebrate Independence Day.

Though the four-strong crew of the Space Shuttle Atlantis arrived at Kennedy Space Center (KSC) this afternoon the day was, for the vast majority of NASA employees working on the mission, the end of a welcome long weekend before mission control gets down to serious business.

Just as the technicians, engineers, mission planners and pad workers arrive at their stations to start the clock on Tuesday lunchtime, I hope to be well on my way across the Atlantic courtesy of a Virgin flight.

In principle I will be catching up with some work on the laptop - in practice my battery may be dead and so I may just be catching one of the latest film releases on the in-flight entertainment system.

The atmosphere at KSC this week will be one of high drama and excitement, tinged with sadness and probably some unbelief to those more closely involved than I that this will be the last opportunity to work on or witness a Space Shuttle launch.

I will be meeting up with many old friends on the Shuttle media circuit at KSC. Some of them, like Gerard van de Haar and Rudolf van Beest from the Netherlands, are veterans of many more ‘live’ Shuttle launches than myself.

Spaceflight’s Ken Kremer, from New Jersey, will be there too, along with many other regulars and, of course, the great US TV media, rolling into town like a posse of modern-day cowboys on their giant satellite wagons.

But there is also a touch of irony to this whole affair. Barely a week after American’s toast Independence Day with patriotic pride, the country’s human space programme will slip into a new phase that will be far from independent.

Political shenanigans in the last two US administrations have left a gaping hole in the country’s space infrastructure. It means that after the final flight of the Space Shuttle the US will loose its only means of launching its own citizens into space.
 

This time it is the Russians who have come to the rescue, offering NASA a rather neat ‘pay as you go’ commercial service for at least the next three years, and probably longer.

So there you have it. America is about to pay Russia around 60 million bucks a throw to blast its astronauts into space on a rocket that has changed little since the days of Yuri Gagarin.

But first we have a final Shuttle mission to enjoy!