| NASA delays shuttle flights until spring The long-suffering space shuttle Discovery was once again unable to return to the Cape Canaveral spaceport in Florida on time due to weather. The Boeing 747 transport, which was supposed to deliver the shuttle, which landed at an alternate base in California, to the Kennedy Space Center, was delayed on Saturday evening while refueling in Louisiana to wait out bad weather in the area of the main launch site of American ships. However, this is not the most unpleasant news for participants in the International Space Station project - at the end of last week, NASA leaders, realizing that the aerospace agency specialists would not be able to quickly identify the list of problems terrorizing the shuttles and eliminate them, decided to abandon the September mission of the Atlantis spacecraft " According to NASA Administrator Michael Griffin, the next shuttle flight will not take place until March 2006.
For Roscosmos, which since February 2003, when Columbia died, has been forced to take over the main transport supply of the ISS, this means the inevitable resumption of long consultations with overseas and European partners on the project. The leaders of the Russian space agency have repeatedly stated that they cannot increase the number of ships sent from Earth into orbit. Until the spring of next year, two more launches of manned Soyuz and two flights of cargo Progress were planned (the first truck is already being prepared at Baikonur for the launch scheduled for September 8). Moreover, by selling seats to tourists or ESA specialists on short-term visiting expeditions, domestic enterprises in the space industry hoped to receive the money that the federal budget was not able to allocate for their needs. Now, due to a new postponement of the resumption of regular shuttle flights into orbit, Russian commercial projects may be in question. Moreover, NASA, which had previously not expressed a desire to pay for the construction and flights to the ISS of above-plan Soyuz, has already hinted that it is not going to think about compensating its partners. In his speech, Mr. Griffin emphasized that the postponement of the Atlantis launch to next spring will not affect the work of the crews of the international station and the project as a whole.
Explaining the purpose of the forced schedule adjustment, the NASA director was forced to admit that his agency's best experts would not be able to eliminate the main problem before September and prevent insulation boards from external fuel tanks from getting on the skin of the shuttles during launch. It is believed that this was the root cause of the death of Columbia, and two years later, but without tragic consequences, it was repeated during the July flight of Discovery. NASA specialists intend to devote the available time before the new flight to studying the falling off heat-protective materials. Most likely, the external fuel tanks will be returned back to their production site near New Orleans. Michael Griffin clarified that his agency and the White House do not set themselves the goal of completing a certain number of flights in the next five years - which is exactly how long it is allotted for the existence of reusable ships of the current generation. According to the director of NASA, it is necessary to prepare a gradual replacement for the system and, of course, to prevent it from posing a threat to the lives of crews.
NASA space program director Bill Gerstenmaier stressed that the agency sets realistic goals for its employees - and the additional months before the next launch will eliminate this threat. At the same time, according to Mr. Gerstenmaier, Discovery will be the first to fly again after a new break in order to finally reassure the ground services. And only when the safety of the shuttles is confirmed in space, Atlantis will go into orbit with cargo for the ISS. Fedor SEREBRYANSKY |
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