Atlantis Space Shuttle flight marked the beginning of new chapter in built-up of International Space Station. After the Columbia accident lot was said and written about NASA’s space program. People doubted NASA’s ability to pounce back after such disaster. NASA’s has gone a radical change in terms of management and problem resolution after the board cited serious problems in NASA’s culture during the Columbia accident investigation. I started working at NASA after the board review and saw immediate difference in approach on critical issues. NASA’s managers gave outmost importance to all the viewpoints and concerns, overall it increased the workload for the managers but gave a greater level of confidence in carrying out the space station mission.
The Discovery flight was a logistics flight which was essential to put supplies on the Station. After the Columbia incident the space station was fed with supplies through Russian spacecraft (Soyuz, Progress). For time being they were the lifelines of the station. The limitation of Russian spacecraft in its inability to carry payloads (such as truss) meant that the built up of the space station came to standstill. The crew was brought down to 2 instead of 3. The supplies were getting limited and no new structure or payload was added to the station. The station continued with overall maintenance and experiments through this time.
After the completion of this Atlantis Flight, space station will have a visibly different look with addition of P3/P4 truss structure along with two solar arrays which will bring the space station power capabilities almost to double paving way for built up of new modules. Currently as per the space program the next few flights are truss installations flights. The Japanese and other American modules will be installed after these flight when the space station has enough power to support them.
Installation of P3/P4 truss is very critical operations involving both the station and shuttle arms along with mobile transporter on the station. The crew will have to conduct 3 space walks (EVA extravehicular activities) to connect the truss umbilical to the station and make it operational. The other routine task will be inspection of RCC tiles using OBSS. Lot of simulation and analysis has been done on ground to make these events picture perfect. Coordination of lot of teams at mission control is required to carry out such complex operations. But Nasa managers are always ready for surprises.
Space exploration is risky business and lot is needed to be achieved before we can think of a man mission to moon or mars. But the current flight reassures us that we are moving in right direction. The expertise gain in due course will be very useful for future exploration through out the world.
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