Shuttle’s Return to Space Is on the Horizon

With the resumption of space shuttle flight possibly three months away, launch fever has begun to rise at America’s spaceport, and Thursday the commander of the first mission scheduled since the Columbia tragedy said she was ready to go.

“Clearly I’m not going to fly on something that’s unsafe,” said Eileen M. Collins, a former colonel in the Air Force and a veteran of three spaceflights. “I’m a person who won’t even get on a roller coaster at an amusement park because they scare me. I’ve been on one once, and I won’t do it again.”

Collins, 48, and her six crewmates, clad in blue flight suits, were at the John F. Kennedy Space Center on Florida’s Atlantic Coast to inspect the orbiter Discovery, including the numerous modifications designed to make shuttle flight safer.

The program has been grounded for more than two years since Columbia disintegrated on reentry Feb. 1, 2003. All seven astronauts aboard died. Investigators blamed the accident on a briefcase-sized chunk of foam insulation that broke off the shuttle’s external fuel tank and slammed into the orbiter’s left wing, gouging a hole.

Since then, the foam has been removed from part of the external tank, temperature and motion sensors were installed in the wings to detect potentially dangerous impacts, and a 50-foot-long boom was placed in the orbiter’s cargo bay that Collins and her crew will be able to use to inspect the shuttle’s thermal tiles during flight.

Although some experts have questioned whether NASA is rushing back to manned flight operations, the feeling that permeates the space center is that the right time will be very soon. The earliest launch window envisioned for what has been dubbed RTL, or “return to flight,” is May 12 to June 3.

In an interview, launch director Michael D. Leinbach said, “It’s all converging on what looks like May 15 to start flying the shuttle again.”

On that day, blastoff and the separation of the external tank from the orbiter could take place during daylight, which is desirable from a safety standpoint, Leinbach said. He said he would be recommending that date, but that a National Aeronautics and Space Administration committee would have the final say.

As America’s space establishment prepares for the potential spring mission, “people are pumped,” said Leinbach, whose office overlooks a “firing room” where launches are directed and Pad 39B, from where Discovery will be sent into orbit. Because of lessons learned from the Columbia disaster and the 1986 explosion of Challenger, which killed all seven aboard, the 20-year veteran of NASA said the coming shuttle missions should be the safest ever.

“Are they going to be risk-free?” Leinbach said. “No. The only way to take the risk out is to never fly again.”

As of Thursday, 300 engineers, technicians and inspectors were toiling at the space center to ready Discovery for flight, while an equal number were working on another orbiter, Atlantis. As part of the safety changes mandated since the Columbia tragedy, the second shuttle must be prepared for a rescue mission in the event Collins and her crew cannot return to Earth.

On a day when warm sunshine burned off morning fog, Mark Taylor, 39, an aerospace technician, buried his head inside the nose wheel well of Discovery and checked if insulating patches needed to be inserted between the ceramic thermal tiles to guarantee a perfect seal to protect against heat.

The orbiter, housed in a special building designed for preflight preparations, was almost invisible inside a labyrinth of steel platforms, pipes and tubing.

Lately, the inspectors who check his work have become harder to please, said Taylor, who has worked at Kennedy Space Center for 16 years. The more exacting standards, he said, have made his job “more demanding but more satisfying.” His goal, the technician said, was to get a “national resource” flying again.

Discovery’s mission, which would be the 114th flight of a U.S. space shuttle, is designed to carry a large cylinder laden with food, water and other supplies to the International Space Station.

“We’re excited; we’ve been looking forward to this for a long time,” said NASA engineer Scott Higginbotham, who is in charge of the payload.

While shuttle flights have been suspended, Russian rockets have been ferrying supplies to the space station. Meanwhile, the three Italian-built cargo modules designed for the shuttle, named Raffaello, Leonardo and Donatello, have sat idle inside the Space Station Processing Building here.

NASA officials acknowledge they have not fully completed all of the changes that the independent board investigating the Columbia disaster recommended as prerequisites for resuming shuttle operations. Florida Space Authority Executive Director Winston Scott, a former astronaut, said he was “cautiously optimistic” that the space agency had done everything it needed to for a return to space.

“I don’t want to bash NASA. I still consider myself a part of them,” said Scott, who flew two shuttle missions and made three spacewalks. “But at the same time, I want to be honest. I’m not sure whether NASA has made the organizational changes necessary to prevent another Columbia. I sure hope they have.”

Richard Blomberg, an engineer in Stamford, Conn., and a former head of NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel, said too much attention had been paid to ruling out an exact repeat of the Columbia accident while ignoring greater risk factors, including aging infrastructure. The orbiter that Collins will command flew for the first time Aug. 30, 1984, and has made 30 spaceflights.

Leinbach, the launch director, said if he had a feeling on launch day that any technical problem had been only “95% solved,” or that enthusiasm to get back into space had clouded NASA personnel’s judgment, he would order the launch scrubbed.

Several important matters remain unresolved, including what to use for in-flight repair of the thermal tiles, which protect the shuttle’s nose and belly from temperatures of more than 2,300 degrees Fahrenheit upon reentry.

Five methods are being studied, including a giant caulking gun that dispenses pinkish-orange goo.

In addition to Collins, who in 1999 was the first woman to command a shuttle mission, the crew includes pilot James Kelly and mission specialists Charles Camarda, Wendy Lawrence, Stephen Robinson and Andrew Thomas, all Americans; and Soichi Noguchi of Japan.