Page 5 - Orbiter News Today

Done this situation next, one cnn are lastly, its now, it starts with our out of this world lead chinas space agency reports. its a lunar lander successfully lifted off from the far side of the moon this morning its bringing back the first ever samples from the side of the moon that we never see, not because it never, that we never see because it faces space, not earth the goal is to get those moon rocks training since forward to awaiting orbiter that well head back to earth and drop them off on...

-[ indistinct ] -main engine start. two...one... we got booster ignition and liftoff of the space shuttle atlantis. -sts-112 had a very similar piece of foam come off from almost the same location, but in that case, the foam hit solid rocket booster and put a dent in it. -the foam traveled -- traveled down. it struck right here, these three lines. -it didnt hit the orbiter, so it was no effect to the flight. the management team, they analyzed it and came up with the conclusion that no safety of ...

-okay, so this is the e-mail that was sent to the crew. "you guys are doing a fantastic job staying on timeline and accomplishing great science. there is one item that i would like to make you aware of. this item is not even worth mentioning, other than wanting to make sure that you are not surprised by it in a question from a reporter. during ascent, at approximately 80 seconds, some debris came loose and subsequently impacted the orbiter left wing. experts have reviewed the high-speed photogra...

Its really hard to tell if anything bad had happened. i mean, this is insulating foam. its lightweight. -so the orange, um, is the external tank which is covered in foam on the outside. -its carrying cryogenically cold liquid oxygen and hydrogen, and its going to sit out on the launch pad in the sunshine in florida. you dont want that to start boiling off, so over the outside of the tank there is this spray-on insulating foam. cheap, very effective. but its got this property that, as you go thro...

She said, "i want you to turn this off because we dont need to bother those other people." -how did you feel when she said that? -i was mad because i dont like to be overruled. id been, you know, trying to act within my authority, and id been countermanded by my boss. -linda ham knew that nasas history with the department of defense and using spy satellites was a little bit checkered. -there had been a previous mission where the landing parachute door came off on launch, so the orbiter was flyin...

Where there were some high-altitude telescopes. these are looking at stars. so if you want to look at the orbiter, you could probably get the entire orbiter fit in the field of view and have extremely good resolution. -and i said, "well, i dont really know much about that, bob. well have to check." -and so i got the assurance from wayne that, um, he would make some calls and he would see what -- what could be done, and, um, things were put into motion. ♪ no. you dont want to alarm the crew tha...

-there are about 31,000 of them all together, and we hope those tiles will stay on when the orbiter comes back into the atmosphere, because otherwise the craft itself could be damaged. -during the development of the space shuttle in the 1970s, there was quite an effort to develop a way to repair damaged tiles on orbit. it was a huge effort... and it was an utter failure. they could not develop anything, and that was one of the "accepted risks" of flying in space. ♪ -okay. good morning. were re...

-they put bleachers close to the runway, and youre driven down there and youre in a set of bleachers with your friends and family that you have invited for the landing. -they had speakers, and you could hear rick talking. -and, rick, were ready for the manoeuvre. -i did not usually come in for a landing. to me, those were so routine. usually, the orbiter has been working well, they have a good weather call. but i had this wing concern because of the impact. so i said, "i will go in." i realized ...

And they identified very early on and got images early on and everything went about perfectly, just maybe there could have been a rescue mission. but its questionable whether you could get the other orbiter, which would have been atlantis in this case, processed and out to the pad in time without putting that crew at serious risk. we would have had to pull together this huge effort in the eleventh hour to figure out how to fly one shuttle next to the other to conduct an operation that youd never...

All of that data pointed to a problem at rcc panel 8. something very different happened in this location on the orbiter. and so, lets go see if we can understand what that was. -ok, so, as the vehicle is entering the atmosphere, these black tiles are protecting the structure, the aluminium of the vehicle, in high-heat areas. and the grey is the wing leading edge reinforced carbon-carbon, rcc panels. those protect the vehicle from the highest level of heat, those 3,000 degree temperatures, so tha...