Ready For Liftoff
NASA prepares to launch a new shuttle, putting it all on the line in an attempt to stay in space
The stakes have never been higher for NASA as it counts down to a return to human space travel, with the plan to launch the shuttle Discovery by the end of this month and perhaps as early as this week. And the margin for error has never been smaller. What if, despite safety upgrades, another shuttle is lost?
"Game over," says space shuttle manager Bill Parsons. "That's it. Game over."
This will be the 114th shuttle flight but only the first since February 2003, when space shuttle Columbia disintegrated in a shower of fiery debris over Texas. Not only are lives on the line this time but so is the audacious space-exploration vision that President Bush handed to NASA early last year, with orders to get serious about sending Americans back to the moon and on to Mars. In the hot seat: new NASA boss Michael Griffin, just months into the job.
The game plan is roughly this:
By 2010 the three remaining shuttles, Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavour, finish turning the space station, currently home to two crew members at a time, into a working laboratory for half a dozen people or more. Then the shuttles, NASA's premier launchers since 1981, go to museums.
Aboard the station, the United States abandons original intents to use it for wide-ranging science to focus entirely on practical research on keeping people healthy during long space voyages. All other scientific work at the station will be up to international partners, chiefly from Russia, Europe, and Japan.
After the shuttle retires, NASA's access to the station depends on the new crew exploration vehicle (CEV), if it is ready. It will be able to carry small cargo loads and half a dozen people at a time. Russian, European, Japanese, or possibly privately developed vehicles will help carry freight.
Between 2015 and 2020, astronauts use a version of the CEV to land on the moon and build a base or bases. Unlike the landing areas explored briefly by 12 astronauts during the Apollo program in the 1960s and early '70s, these bases are occupied indefinitely, with electricity produced from small nuclear reactors.
After lunar experience with long-term residence on another world, NASA's astronauts follow the paths broken by robot scouts to construct and occupy a research base on Mars. No date is sure, but some NASA experts peg it at 2030 or later.
Of course, if the shuttles don't do their part, the plan goes back to the drawing board.
Suiting up. In command of Discovery will be Eileen Collins, a retired Air Force pilot and veteran of three previous shuttle flights. This is her first trip to the international space station, but in 1995 she flew to Russia's Mir, becoming the first female shuttle pilot. In 1999, she became the first woman to command a shuttle, the Columbia, on a flight to launch a space telescope. The Discovery that Collins and her crew will take into orbit will look to the unexpert eye just like previous shuttles, but many items are altered or new. The biggest physical changes focus on preventing an accident of the sort that brought Columbia down: ice or other debris tumbling from the boosters, or the giant external fuel tank, and damaging the wings' leading edges or other fragile surfaces.
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