NASA Details Plans for Future Space Shuttle Flights
The space shuttle in the future will only be launched in daylight, under the scrutiny of powerful cameras, and astronauts may be trained for spacewalking inspections if engineers suspect the heat shield was damaged during the launch, NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe said Wednesday.
Despite extensive analysis of the space shuttle program and hardware following the Columbia accident, there are “no show stoppers” that would keep the shuttle fleet grounded for safety reasons, O’Keefe told reporters. He expects the flights to resume in December or early next year.
No matter what NASA does, O’Keefe said, spaceflight will continue to be “inherently very risky. We’ll do as much to reduce it as humanly possible.”
Tests suggest a barely visible crack in a wing heat shield could have brought down the shuttle, O’Keefe said. He added that if such a small crack could cause a catastrophe, it would force NASA to adopt extreme inspection measures.
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