$2.5 Billion For 2011 Space Shuttle Trips In Budget Bill Won’t Fund Extra Flights; Also, Appropriations, Authorization Needed
NASA gave Space Shuttle Atlantis a clean bill of health, saying it is good to go for a launch at 2:01 p.m. ET May 11 from Launch Pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center on the STS-125 Mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope.
That liftoff has been delayed for months by unexpected problems with the Hubble, which Atlantis crew members will repair.
Fixing the eye in the sky will involve extensive work, with a huge array of new tools, tons of spare parts and back-to-back spacewalks, according to Bill Gerstenmaier, associate NASA administrator for space operations.
“We’re ready to go,” said John Shannon, space shuttle program manager.
Except for some dents in a radiator, there were no issues working on Atlantis as it awaited the countdown, according to Mike Leinbach, space shuttle launch director.
Atlantis won’t re-boost the Hubble to a higher orbit, briefers said. The Hubble will be replaced in the next decade by the James Webb Space Telescope.
Separately, Gerstenmaier was asked at a news briefing whether $2.5 billion suggested by a budget committee would permit additional space shuttle flights in the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 2011, beyond the current deadline for shuttle flights to cease at the end of fiscal 2010.
But he said that chunk of funds only would permit flying the currently scheduled shuttle flights in 2011, not providing funds for added shuttle missions. Further, budget resolutions don’t provide funding for government programs. Rather, funds must be authorized by authorizing committees, and actually appropriated by appropriations committees.
Still, the budget language provides an opening for flying shuttle missions beyond the end of fiscal 2010, if they are delayed, as this Atlantis mission was.
Separately, further funding is sought by several members of Congress for an added space shuttle mission that would carry the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS), a $1.5 billion multinational experiment, to the space station. Otherwise, it will sit uselessly on the ground, the money wasted. Only shuttles have the brawn to hoist the AMS to orbit. The next- generation U.S. spaceship, Orion, can’t do that.
Because Atlantis is going to the Hubble, the crew won’t have a safe place like the International Space Station to use as a life raft, if trouble develops on the space shuttle. So NASA has rolled out Space Shuttle Endeavour to Launch Pad 39B, where it is poised, ready to rush to the rescue if needed.
If it is, it would take about seven days after the Atlantis liftoff to launch Endeavour. That could mean rescue might be about three days away for a troubled Atlantis crew.
Otherwise, if no emergency arises on Atlantis, Endeavour will be shifted from Pad 39B to Pad 39A to launch June 12 on a mission to the International Space Station.
Technicians over the weekend finished stowing the Orbiter Boom Sensor System in Atlantis. Also, they repaired that minor damage to a radiator faceplate on Atlantis’ left payload bay door. The damage occurred when a wrench socket hit the radiator during payload installation.
Meanwhile, at Johnson Space Center in Houston, the STS-125 Atlantis astronauts completed medical checkups Friday prior to entering the standard prelaunch quarantine. No special quarantine or other steps were taken because of the swine flu outbreak. Those crew members are set to arrive at Kennedy on Friday.