NASA Delays Final Two Shuttle Flights

NASA Delays Final Two Shuttle Flights

CAPE CANAVERAL—NASA managers July 1 decided to delay the last two missions of the space shuttle program to allow more time to prepare a final load of spare parts for the International Space Station.

To cover shuttle operating expenses beyond Sept. 30, NASA will dip into an expected $600-million cushion promised by legislators and tap savings that managers have been accruing from the program’s roughly $200 million monthly allotments.

If schedules hold, Discovery will lift off at 4:33 p.m. EDT on Nov. 1 with a load of station space parts and other equipment inside the Leonardo Multi-Purpose Logistics Module, which is being modified to remain permanently attached to the space station as a storage pod.

A previously requested launch date of Oct. 29 posed scheduling conflicts with station operations as well as for the 45th Space Wing at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, which provides tracking and range safety services for shuttle launches.

“There’s so much traffic around the station it ultimately made the most sense to pick Nov. 1,” said NASA spokesman Kyle Herring.

The Kennedy Space Center launch team expects to have four launch attempts over seven days before a Sun angle heating issue during what would be the docked phase of the mission would prohibit launching from Nov. 8 until late in the month. After that, station operations would complicate shuttle launch plans, with Europe’s second Automated Transfer Vehicle cargo ship slated to dock around Dec. 17 and Japan’s second H-II Transfer Vehicle arriving in January. There is another long period in January when solar heating concerns again would prohibit launch.

Those issues also drove NASA to pick Feb. 26 as the target launch date for STS-134, currently the program’s finale. That mission, onboard shuttle Endeavour, will be devoted to delivering and installing the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer particle detector to the station. It was initially expected to fly in November, but was bumped when managers decided to delay Discovery’s STS-133 mission to allow more time to prepare payloads, including a prototype service robot known as “Robonaut,” a pump package and a heat exchanger.

A decision on an additional station cargo mission next summer on shuttle Atlantis, which will be prepared as an emergency rescue vehicle for the Endeavour crew, is pending.