Keep the shuttle flying: Fwd: 20 Years Since the Marathon Mission of STS-73

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From: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Date: October 18, 2015 at 8:05:33 PM CDT
To: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Subject: FW: 20 Years Since the Marathon Mission of STS-73

AmericaSpace
For a nation that explores
October 17th, 2015
'Not For Geeks': 20 Years Since the Marathon Mission of STS-73 (Part 1)
By Ben Evans

With her port-side payload bay door positioned at 62-degrees-open, in order to guard against Micrometeoroid Orbital Debris (MMOD) impacts in a gravity gradient attitude, Columbia sails through her long-delayed 18th mission in October-November 1995. Photo Credit: NASA
The "geek" has long been recognized as an eccentric, non-mainstream individual, usually imbued with a peculiar or obsessive enthusiasm for mathematics or another complex, intellectual pursuit. In time, these "square pegs" would go on to become a mainstream staple of 21st-century technological society, but 20 years ago the geek was an intensely derogatory, pejorative term, "mocked by jocks and ignored at parties." And on 20 October 1995, as the seven astronauts of STS-73 departed the Operations & Checkout (O&C) Building at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida, bound for the launch pad and Space Shuttle Columbia, they did so with their U.S.-flag-emblazoned baseball caps turned back to front. In the words of Payload Specialist Al Sacco—restaurateur, certified scuba diver, chemical engineer, and spaceflier—the crew did so purely to demonstrate that science and technology were decidedly not for geeks.
Watching the footage of the STS-73 crew, commanded by Ken "Sox" Bowersox, the youngest human being ever to lead a shuttle mission, departing the O&C Building that morning, it is also notable that they strode along the hall with their cap-peaks positioned face-forward, then elected to reverse them as they emerged into a throng of well-wishers and photographers' flashbulbs. "We were so desperate that last day that we decided to turn our hats around backwards," Bowersox explained at the post-flight press conference, and went on to describe them as "our rally caps," offering a nod toward the baseballing tradition of wearing them as a lucky charm or to achieve a "come-from-behind" victory. "And it must've worked," he added, "because we managed to launch."
However, the STS-73 launch was a long time coming. In fact, getting Columbia—the oldest of NASA's operational shuttle fleet—ready for her 18th voyage into space had seemed to be an exercise in frustration and, even to this day, STS-73 is tied with the unlucky pre-Challenger Mission 61C for having suffered the longest number (six) of unsuccessful launch attempts, before eventually reaching orbit. In the late summer of 1995, Columbia had been out of service for several months, following a series of modifications and structural enhancements at prime contractor Rockwell International's facility in Palmdale, Calif. By this stage, NASA had decided that future Orbiter Maintenance Down Period (OMDP) work would be performed exclusively at Palmdale, thereby employing 300 Rockwell staff for shuttle upgrades and preserving KSC's 7,000-strong workforce to focus on readying the other vehicles in order to save the time and money needed to ship the orbiters from the East to the West Coasts, atop the Boeing 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft (SCA).
Highlighting the significance of the protein crystal growth investigations flown aboard the Spacelab module, the STS-73 crew patch highlights a central tenet of the second United States Microgravity Laboratory (USML-2). The surnames of the seven crew members are positioned in the outer border. Image Credit: NASA, via Joachim Becker/SpaceFacts.de
Originally, Columbia was to have undergone a six-month modification period at KSC—as had earlier been done with her sister, Discovery—in order to allow her to launch the STS-67 mission with the ASTRO-2 payload in December 1994 and be ready in time for a return to flight on STS-73 with the second U.S. Microgravity Laboratory (USML-2) in September of the following year. However, following the March 1994 decision to once again utilize Palmdale staff for OMDP activities, it was realized that insufficient time existed to remove the ASTRO-2 hardware from Columbia, fly her out to the West Coast for six months of enhancements, fly her back to the Cape, and process her for STS-73, in time for a launch in the fall of 1995. As a consequence, STS-67 was shifted onto Shuttle Endeavour and flew successfully in March 1995. This provided the Rockwell workforce with a broader window to work on Columbia, which was flown to Palmdale in October 1994, returning to her Florida home in April 1995.
During her OMDP, she received 66 modifications, including new wiring for laptop computers and new filters for her hydrogen flow control valves to minimize contamination. Moderate problems with corrosion had been noticed, particularly on the leading edge of her wings, with suspicion falling upon the amount of time Columbia had sat on the launch pad and been subjected to copious quantities of salty Atlantic spray, prior to the installation of a weather-protection system. Nevertheless, 460 X-ray and 19 visual inspections revealed that she was in excellent condition after 17 missions, 2,300 orbits of Earth, 62 million miles (100 million km) traveled, and 146 days in space between April 1981 and July 1994.
Two other key differences would characterize Columbia and her crew on STS-73. One of these was a full set of the new "Block I" Space Shuttle Main Engines (SSMEs), one of which had been test-flown alongside two old-style engines aboard STS-70 in July 1995. The second difference became apparent when the STS-73 crew—with Commander Bowersox joined by Pilot Kent Rominger, Payload Commander Kathy Thornton, Mission Specialists Catherine "Cady" Coleman and Mike Lopez-Alegria, and Payload Specialists Fred Leslie and Al Sacco—departed the O&C Building on launch morning: they all wore new suits. Since the resumption of shuttle operations in the wake of the Challenger accident, on STS-26 in September 1988, all astronauts had worn pumpkin-orange-colored David Clark Co. partial-pressure suits, but with STS-73 a new, lightweight, and low-bulk Advanced Crew Escape Suit (ACES) was worn by the entire crew.
Upon her return to KSC, Columbia began processing for her next mission. Originally, when Thornton and Coleman were named in March 1994—becoming the first members of the crew to be assigned—it was expected that STS-73's 16-day projected duration would make it the longest flight ever attempted in the shuttle program. However, with the ASTRO-2 mission having been shifted onto Endeavour, which was also capable of Extended Duration Orbiter (EDO) missions, it became clear that STS-67 would seize this record and that STS-73 would come close to equaling it. Following the assignment of Thornton and Coleman, the two Payload Specialists were announced in June 1994 and the remainder of the crew the following November. Of note, Leslie had secured a joint record in October 1992 as a participant in the then-largest-ever, 200-person skydiving freefall—and would later pose for a skydiving "selfie" in March 2011, as shuttle Discovery launched behind him on her final mission—whereas Bowersox became the youngest person in history ever to command a shuttle mission, aged just 38 at the time of Columbia's flight.
Unfortunately, the effort involving in flying STS-73 would reinforce the orbiter's reputation for being a seemingly immovable bear when it came to getting her off the launch pad. On no fewer than six occasions—tying with "Mission Impossible," 61C—Columbia and her crew were foiled by scrub after scrub. The vehicle was rolled out to Pad 39A in late August 1995, tracking an opening launch attempt on 28 September. However, following a smooth countdown, the clock was halted, shortly after technicians had begun to load the External Tank (ET) with cryogenic propellants, when a sensor detected a hydrogen leak in one of the SSME fuel valves. The troublesome valve was replaced and launch was rescheduled for 5 October, but this second attempt also came to nothing, due to fears of high winds, thunderstorms, and lightning associated with Hurricane Opal, which threatened to jeopardize the ET fueling process. Another try on 6 October also proved fruitless, when it transpired that fluid had been mistakenly drained from part of Columbia's nose-wheel steering hydraulic system.
After a record-tying six postponed launch attempts, STS-73 finally roared into orbit on 20 October 1995, 20 years ago, this coming week. Photo Credit: NASA, via Joachim Becker/SpaceFacts.de
Either way, there was only a 30-percent likelihood of acceptable weather that day, due to the prospect of gusting winds, rain, and Opal-related clouds. A fourth attempt on 7 October was scrubbed by Launch Director Jim Harrington at T-20 seconds—by which time the Ground Launch Sequencer (GLS) had already handed over control of the countdown to Columbia's on-board suite of General Purpose Computers (GPCs)—following an indication of a fault in one of two Master Events Controllers (MECs). The latter carried responsibility for breaking the hold-down bolts of the twin Solid Rocket Boosters (SRBs) at T-0, as well as commanding the pyrotechnics to separate the spent boosters and the ET during flight. Replacing the MEC necessitated the draining of the ET propellants and an unavoidable delay until no sooner than 14 October. This quickly became the 15th, due to additional inspections of the SSMEs' oxidizer ducts, following the detection of cracking in a similar duct which was then undergoing tests at NASA's Stennis Space Center in Hancock County, Miss.
Ultrasound checks were performed on welds on each of the SSMEs' High-Pressure Oxidizer Turbopump (HPOT) discharge ducts to verify that they were of the proper thickness. Also during this delay, one of Columbia's five GPCs failed and had been replaced. The 15 October launch date target had, by now, also come under threat from the deteriorating weather and it was scrubbed at T-5 minutes, due to low clouds and rain. Another attempt was impossible before the 19th, since the Eastern Test Range's tracking assets were already supporting an Atlas rocket from nearby Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The Atlas was originally slated to fly on 17 October, but had itself been postponed by a day due to bad weather, and this in turn pushed STS-73 back to the 20th. Even as Bowersox and his crew steeled themselves for a record-tying seventh attempt to get into space, the weather prospects seemed grim.
None of the delays seemed to have dampened the enthusiasm of the crew, five of whom—Rominger, Coleman, Lopez-Alegria, Leslie, and Sacco—had not flown into space before. As the backward-baseball-cap-wearing astronauts strode out of the O&C Building, Kathy Thornton carried beneath her orange ACES suit another talisman of good luck: a pair of red-and-white-striped socks. "In addition to wearing our caps backwards, I wore my lucky socks on the day we finally launched," she remarked at the post-flight press conference. "After 30 days of quarantine, I knew I was ready to launch, but I wasn't sure I could remember what the mission was!" Liftoff occurred at 8:53 a.m. EDT and Columbia rose perfectly into a 150-mile (240 km) orbit, inclined 39 degrees to the equator.
Said Mike Lopez-Alegria, seated in the flight engineer's position, behind Bowersox and Rominger, his first voyage into orbit was, quite literally, "The ride of your life!" Within minutes of achieving orbit, the seven astronauts set about converting Columbia into a home and laboratory for 16 days of around-the-clock in the bus-sized Spacelab module in the payload bay. Coleman and Lopez-Alegria worked to deploy the payload bay doors and radiators and the Ku-band antenna. However, the shuttle's unusual "gravity gradient" attitude—with her tail facing Earthward and her left wing pointing in the direction of travel, required to provide a stable microgravity environment for the USML-2 experiments—called for the port-side door to be positioned at 62-degrees-open, in order to minimize the risk of Micrometeoroid Orbital Debris (MMOD) strikes on the delicate radiators.
After that, Coleman, Lopez-Alegria and Leslie—who formed the "night shift," or "Blue Team"—came to the end of their first work day and bedded down for a few hours' sleep. Coleman later remarked that going to sleep so soon after launching into space was "probably the hardest thing we had to do the whole mission, because I just can't tell you how exciting ascent was."

Copyright © 2015 AmericaSpace - All Rights Reserved

AmericaSpace
For a nation that explores
October 18th, 2015
'Without Travel Orders': 20 Years Since the Marathon Flight of STS-73 (Part 2)
By Ben Evans
Clad in their respective "red" and "blue" shirts, to denote their membership of the 12-hour Red and Blue Teams, the STS-73 crew pose for an in-flight portrait in the Spacelab module. Front row (from left) are Kathy Thornton, Mike Lopez-Alegria, and Ken Bowersox, with Catherine "Cady" Coleman and Fred Leslie in the middle row, and Al Sacco and Kent Rominger bringing up the rear. Photo Credit: NASA
Today, in the middle of the second decade of the 21st century, we have grown used to the presence of the International Space Station (ISS) and around-the-clock research in space no longer seems uncommon. Yet 20 years ago, as NASA's Space Shuttle fleet averaged seven missions per year, each one flying for no longer than a couple of weeks at a time, the ability to conduct "hands-on" research in the peculiar microgravity environment of low-Earth orbit was considerably less frequent. In reflection of this reality, and to prepare for future ISS research, a number of shuttle missions were outfitted with the Extended Duration Orbiter (EDO) capability, which allowed for longer flights, in excess of 16 days. On 20 October 1995, Shuttle Columbia rocketed into orbit for one such EDO mission. In her payload bay was the bus-sized Spacelab module, outfitted for the second United States Microgravity Laboratory (USML-2). For almost 16 days, her seven-member crew worked around-the-clock and, in a very real sense—although it would be another half-decade before the first permanent ISS crew reached their orbital home—they functioned for a short time as a "space station" in their own right.
However, as outlined in yesterday's AmericaSpace history article, Columbia's launch on STS-73 was a long time coming. Today, the flight holds the unenviable record of having tied with Mission 61C in having suffered as many as six frustrated launch attempts, before finally rising into space on the seventh try. In Commander Ken "Sox" Bowersox's mind, their fortune may have turned on the most unlikely of dimes: wearing back-to-front baseball caps as they walked out of the Operations & Checkout (O&C) Building on the morning of 20 October 1995. "We were so desperate that last day that we decided to turn our hats around backwards," he explained at the post-flight press conference. Describing the hats as "our rally hats"—and offering a nod to the baseballing tradition of wearing them as a lucky charm or to achieve a "come-from-behind" victory—Bowersox was convinced that it worked, "because we managed to launch."
Equipped with the EDO hardware at the rear end of her payload bay, Columbia's STS-73 mission was expected to be one of the longest shuttle flights on record. In fact, when the first members of the crew—Payload Commander Kathy Thornton and Mission Specialist Catherine "Cady" Coleman—were assigned in March 1994, it was expected to be the longest shuttle mission of all time, lasting 16 days, the peak of EDO baseline capability at that time. As the year wore on, the remainder of the crew was appointed. Payload Specialists Fred Leslie and Al Sacco were named in June and Commander Bowersox, Pilot Kent Rominger, and Spanish-born Mission Specialist Mike Lopez-Alegria joined them in November. However, the 16-day achievement was passed by the STS-67 crew in March 1995, raising the likelihood that, unless her own mission was significantly extended, STS-73 would come in as the second-longest shuttle flight at that time.
Blue Team members Catherine "Cady" Coleman, Fred Leslie and Mike Lopez-Alegria bail out of their sleep stations in Columbia's middeck, ahead of another 12 hours in support of the second United States Microgravity Laboratory (USML-2). Photo Credit: NASA
On the back of six fruitless launch attempts, the closeout crew at Pad 39B was startled by a fire alarm, just as they were strapping Bowersox and his crew into their seats on 20 October. However, there were no indications of a fire and, after a short delay, causing by a software glitch, Columbia rocketed into orbit at 8:53 a.m. EDT. From the flight engineer's seat, Mike Lopez-Alegria described it as "the ride of your life" and, soon after achieving orbit, he and Coleman set to work opening the shuttle's payload bay doors and deploying the radiators and Ku-band antenna. Due to the nature of their mission—which included a range of highly-sensitive microgravity experiments—Columbia would orbit the Home Planet in a "gravity gradient" attitude, with her tail pointing Earthward and her port-side wing in the direction of travel. In order to minimize the risk of Micrometeoroid Orbital Debris (MMOD) strikes on the delicate radiator panels, the port-side payload bay door was positioned at 62-degrees-open.
After that, Coleman, Lopez-Alegria, and Leslie—who formed the "night shift," or "Blue Team"—came to the end of their first work day and bedded down for a few hours' sleep. Coleman later remarked that going to sleep so soon after launching into space was "probably the hardest thing we had to do the whole mission, because I just can't tell you how exciting ascent was." In the meantime, the "day shift," or "Red Team," of Bowersox, Rominger, Thornton, and Sacco set to work activating the Spacelab module. Wearing her "lucky" red-and-white socks and U.S. baseball cap, and with checklist in hand, Thornton opened the hatches between Columbia's middeck airlock and the tunnel leading to Spacelab. Fortunately, none of the crew suffered from space sickness and were able to hit the ground running for what was shaping up to be an ambitious mission.
On the afternoon of 25 October, Bowersox opened the port-side door for about an hour to provide sufficient clearance for a waste water dump from Spacelab's condensate tank. Such dumps, which occurred through a nozzle on top of the module's forward end cone, had to be performed every few days to get rid of water from the dehumidifiers. After completing the operation, Bowersox returned the door to its 62-degrees-open position.
It was already common practice on research missions of this type for the crew to work in two 12-hour shifts to maintain operations around-the-clock and, like USML-1 before it, the two Payload Specialists were world-class scientists in their field. Al Sacco had developed several of the mission's zeolite crystal growth investigations, whilst Fred Leslie helped to design the Geophysical Fluid Flow Cell (GFFC) experiment, which was intended to mimic the dynamics of planetary and stellar atmospheres. "We're primarily researchers and scientists," Leslie said of the role of the Payload Specialist, "and the disadvantage is that often you only fly once." The advantages, however, were that he received a flight assignment more quickly than "career" NASA astronauts. "I went into the program in 1994 and flew in '95, so it was fast!" He also added that, since he was officially on U.S. Government Business, he received extra pay, but after transport and accommodation deductions, this amounted to just a couple of dollars per day. "You know the government," Leslie grinned. "You can't go anywhere without travel orders!"
Pilot Kent Rominger deploys the drag chute, as Commander Ken Bowersox rotates Columbia's nose towards the deck on Runway 33 of the Shuttle Landing Facility (SLF) on 5 November 1995. Photo Credit: NASA
As the mission wore on, Kathy Thornton took time to explain the importance of USML-2 for future ISS research. "This is a pathfinder for the kind of investigations we'll have on the space station," she told journalists during a space-to-ground news conference on 2 November. "There are very complicated experiments on-board, but they're working beautifully." For the first time, six-channel video footage from the experiments—which ran the gamut from fluid physics to crystal growth and from surface convection to combustion science—was relayed to the ground, via the High-Packed Digital Television Technical Demonstration (HI-PAC). This differed markedly from the single-channel video downlink previously employed on Spacelab missions and at one stage was even employed by the STS-73 crew to acquire live images of their colleagues sitting at their consoles in the Mission Control Center (MCC) at the Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, Texas.
True to Thornton's words, USML-2 was a real pathfinder for the ISS. And, indeed, four of the STS-73 astronauts would go on to play instrumental roles in the construction and operation of the ISS. Ken Bowersox and Mike Lopez-Alegria would both undertake a long-duration expedition, whilst Kent Rominger would command two ISS assembly missions and Cady Coleman would spend five months aboard the station in the twilight of the shuttle era.
The astronauts took time out at the midpoint of their mission to tape the ceremonial first pitch for Game Five of the baseball World Series. It was the first time that the thrower—in this case, Ken Bowersox—was not physically in the ballpark for the pitch. The video from orbit was replayed on the Jacobs Field Jumbotron screen in Cleveland, Ohio, ahead of the fame. Before throwing the slow-spinning pitch, Bowersox wished the Atlanta Braves and Cleveland Indians good luck. The crew flew baseball caps for both teams and subsequently signed their space-flown baseballs and donated them to Major League Baseball to be enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y.
Early on 5 November 1995, the Spacelab module was shut down and the hatches closed. Bowersox and Rominger fired Columbia's Orbital Maneuvering System (OMS) engines at 5:46 a.m. EDT to begin the hour-long hypersonic descent towards the Shuttle Landing Facility (SLF) at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida. As its trademark twin sonic booms echoed across the marshy landscape, the shuttle entered the Heading Alignment Circle (HAC) in the moments after local sunrise, descending at an 18-degree glide slope—six times steeper than a commercial airliner—and alighting on Runway 33 at 6:45 a.m.
"Sox just had the guidance nailed, doing a beautiful job," recalled Kent Rominger in the post-flight press conference. "And it's very dynamic. It's like trying to land a bomb, because this was the middle of a bombing profile you fly in the Navy. I got the gear out at 300 feet (91 meters), we came across the threshold right where we should have been, touched down 2,500 feet (760 meters) down the runway and the landing was so smooth. It's uncharacteristic of a Navy pilot," Rominger said to audience laughter, "but this landing was so smooth that it was like an airline landing where … everybody just claps and cheers."
All told, STS-73 had lasted 15 days, 21 hours, 52 minutes, and 22 seconds, wrapping up Columbia's longest flight to date, the heaviest landing weight to date, at 230,400 pounds (104,500 kg), and the second-longest mission in shuttle program history at that time. In fact, STS-73 still stands as the fourth-longest flight in the entire, 135-mission shuttle era. To be fair, Rominger—who went on to fly the longest mission in shuttle history, later in his career—would have liked to have remained in orbit another day on STS-73, to capture the record from the STS-67 crew.
But it was not to be. And Rominger's own admission, he had brief trouble with his balance in the early hours after returning to terrestrial gravity.
"If I had to take a drunken-driving test, hoe-to-teel … er … toe-to-heel," he corrected himself, "I probably wouldn't have done very well on that!"

Copyright © 2015 AmericaSpace - All Rights Reserved