NASA considers bringing Endeavour home early to avoid Hurricane Dean

William Atkins
Saturday, 18 August 2007 20:49

Science - Space

With Hurricane Dean threatening the Gulf of Mexico and its Johnson Space Center, NASA mission managers for the STS-118 space shuttle mission are considering a one-day early return of Endeavour.

NASA officials are concerned that the Mission Control Center (MCC), located at the Johnson Space Center (JSC), on the edge of Houston, Texas, in Clear Lake City, might be hit by the force of Hurricane Dean.
 

MCC flight controllers manage the mission of the shuttle crews so are critical in the planning and execution of the de-orbit and landing of Endeavour and its crew. If a hurricane happens at this Texas location, the chance exists that the Johnson Space Center could be seriously impacted.
 

NASA would rather bring the astronauts home early to avoid a possible problem. NASA officials have already indicated that, if needed, they would move certain STS-118 flight personnel from JSC to the Kennedy Space Center (KSC).

Although early-return-to-Earth plans are not certain, as of Saturday morning, NASA has already shortened the last spacewalk from 6.5 hours to 4.5 hours so that the astronauts have sufficient time to prepare for a possible undocking from the space station just before 8 am EDT on Sunday August 19, 2007.

The spacewalk, as of 10:30 am EDT on Saturday, is currently underway. It can be watched from NASA TV at: http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/.

Clay Anderson and Dave Williams are expected to install an external antenna system that will measure structural stresses to the space station trusses. The two spacewalkers are also scheduled to retrieve some external science experiments (that were unable to be collected on the last spacewalk when a hole was discovered on Rick Mastracchio’s spacesuit). The experiments are called MISSE (Materials International Space Station Experiment).
 

Anderson and Williams will also install support equipment on the S1 truss so that an inspection boom (which provides inspection ability to the station’s protective shell from damage of space debris) can be installed on STS-123, scheduled now for February 2008.
 

Because the spacewalk has been shortened in duration, the astronauts will not have time to attach meteoroid shielding to the space station.

If these plans firm up, Endeavour and its STS-118 crew would touchdown at the Kennedy Space Center, in Florida, on Tuesday at 12:30 am EDT (1630 GMT), with another chance about thirty minutes later.

They are currently scheduled to land at 12:52 pm EDT (1652 GMT) Wednesday.

It will be possible for earthlings to see the space shuttle Endeavour and the International Space Station cross the night sky over North America on Sunday and Monday nights. With the shuttle undocked from the space station, the two will appear as two separate bright points of light moving in unison across the night sky. To find when this spectacle will occur in your area, go to Heaven’s Above (http://heavens-above.com), NASA’s J-PASS (http://science.nasa.gov/Realtime/JPass/), or SkyWatch (http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/realdata/sightings/).

The shuttle and station will appear as bright stars in the sky traveling west to south-southeast. The station will be a little bit brighter than the shuttle. The station is brighter because its solar panels reflect a lot of sunlight.
 
Traveling at about 18,000 miles per hour, they will be seen for only a few minutes in the night sky.