Page 21 - Orbiter News Today

More narrow. how much time do they have to launch this at all in your opinion? >> i dont think i know the back end of the window about how long they have this. but nasa works with their russian partners to make sure operations at the space station deacon applicant with their launch date. they have several days this week before they have to worry about rescheduling. lets look for sometime later in the week for a launch and well find out probably sunday when that will be. martha: is it your unders...

Museums, planetariums and visitors centers across the country looking to land a space shuttle orbiter. in texas home of the johnson space center, members of congress publicly lobbied for their home state. >> theres no community in the world, none in the world, that deserves an orbiter more than houston, texas. >> reporter: the drama mirrored the bidding to host an olympic games, with good reason. if your city gets one, the iconic winged flying machines will generate tens of millions in increased...

Congress publicly lobbied for their home state. >> theres no community in the world, none in the world, that deserves an orbiter more than houston, texas. >> reporter: the drama mirrors the bidding to host an olympic games with good reason. if your city gets one the iconic winged flying machines will again rate tens of millions in increased revenues every year. the inpid museum in the big apple translates to 30% in increased attendance. >> over 300,000 people additional to the intread. i to the ...

Contaminated iv bags. and now he is leaving the door open to the u.s. hoping to arm the rebels. im rob marciano in the cnn weather center. we will talk about space and mercury. that planet closet to the sun. we have an orbiter with new pictures. we will show you them. thank you. president barack obama is speaking about energy this morning. in the next hour, we will bring on bill nye the science guy. we will ask if the president has a cursed hand when it comes to policy energy.

Shuttle program is now coming to an end. long overdue, some say. time to move on, build something safer, more reliable, less expensive to fly. >> maybe five, ten, 15 years from now theres going on to be a nostalgia for the shuttle, were we ever that audacious to build spacecraft to do that? and i think well look back and it will be something as if out of a science fiction movie. >> reporter: each orbiter will be ready for retirement after its final flight, taxic gases purged and pyrotechnics rem...

Hawaiian islands. we want to get some perspective on what its like to fly aboard the space shuttle. one person who knows is astronaut clay anderson, hes logged 167 days in space since being selected as a mission specialist by nasa in 1998. he is with us from the johnson space center in texas. thanks for joining us. obviously youve been aboard "discovery." you had a five-month tour of duty working aboard the international space station. tell us what those guys aboard "discovery" are going throu...

They take over just before landing, so theyre going to be very focused. theyve done this many, many times. steve lindsay in orbit as well as in the shuttle training aircraft. so, i think its going to be just executing what theyve been trained to do. >> and specifically in that execution, what are they going to be maneuvering? what are they actually going to be doing in those -- were looking at the countdown clock, 20 minutes or so, before we actually see them land. >> well, at this point, theyre...

Shuttle? >> yes, and jon, the reason that the convoy stays back a little bit is they have to test the air, sniff the air around the orbiter, make sure the fuel used during reentry is not drifting away from the shuttle and once thats verified they can move in and connect air conditioning systems and get the crew some cabin cooling and soon after that their van will pull up, theyll transfer it to a medical facility that drives up to the shuttle and get a quick checkup. >> how is that crew feeling ...

Motion sickness. you have to be careful and move steadily and slowly to keep your wits about you. >> clay, were told two minutes to landing there. can you gives us a sense of whats the most critical aspect of this to have a successful landing. >> steves going to guide the orbiter by flying it through the stick but eric bow has to bring down the landing gear for steve. we assume that the landing gear will koom down normally, but the crew is ready to follow the steps that they would need to do to ...

Hes very focused on what hes doing, looking at all the data to make sure he brings it down as smoothly as possible. >> what does it feel like that moment when youre actually landing? >> its kind of surreal. you kind of let out a sigh of relief because youre safely home and back on the ground. but then kind of immediately once you roll out to the end of the runway, youre back in the checklist. you take a second to talk to the mission control center and congratulate one another, but then youre rig...