Sep 1 2009

From The Space Library

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Revision as of 03:15, 2 November 2012

NASA astronauts Nicole P. Stott and John D. “Danny” Olivas undertook the first spacewalk of STS-128, which lasted 6 hours and 30 minutes. The pair completed the EVA early, with all objectives accomplished. They removed from the ISS’s central truss an ammonia tank that had been in use since 2002. Olivas lifted the 1,300-pound (589-kilogram) tank, which measured 5 feet by 7 feet by 4 feet (1.52 meters by 2.13 meters by 1.22 meters), onto the end of the station’s robotic arm, where it would remain until the installation of a fresh pair of tanks during the next spacewalk. The pair also retrieved from ESA’s Columbus laboratory two sets of experiments, so that the Shuttle could return them to Earth. After removing the ammonia tank, Olivas noticed that the index finger of his right glove had begun to fray. Mission Control evaluated the problem and, after determining that the frayed stitching was minor, decided that Olivas could remain outside and continue the EVA. A few minutes later, Stott noticed a high reading of her carbon dioxide levels. She reported that she was not experiencing any symptoms. Mission Control decided that Stott’s suit was operating fine, and that she, too, could remain outside. The astronauts also experienced a 30-minute communication outage with Mission Control because of a thunderstorm at a satellite-relay station in Guam. The spacewalk was Stott’s first. She was KSC ’s third employee to become an astronaut and the center’s first employee to embark on a spacewalk.

Marcia Dunn for Associated Press, “Spacewalkers Tackle Hefty Tank Removal in Orbit,” 2 September 2009; James Dean, “Ex-KSC Engineer Works Outside ISS,” Florida Today (Brevard, FL), 2 September 2009; Stockton Record (CA), “Astronauts Embark on Their First Spacewalk,” 2 September 2009.

NASA announced that it had completed the Orion project’s preliminary design review (PDR), one of a series of checkpoints in the design life cycle of a complex engineering project. Project managers must complete these checkpoints before hardware manufacturing can begin. The PDR marked a major milestone in the construction of the next CEV. The review board had concluded its evaluation on 31 August 2009, establishing the basis for proceeding to the critical design phase. The Orion CEV design featured a 16.5-foot-wide (5-meter-wide) capsule-shaped crew module for four astronauts; a service module housing utility systems; propulsion components; and an LAS. The PDR evaluated the vehicle’s capability to support flights to the ISS, missions to the Moon lasting for a week, and missions to the Moon lasting as long as 210 days. Each subsystem of the CEV had undergone reviews between February and July 2009, before the project proceeded to the overall vehicle-level review. The vehicle-level review had lasted two months, including reviewers from all 10 NASA field centers. These reviewers evaluated the hundreds of design products that the Lockheed Martin-led industry partnership had delivered. T. Cleon Lacefield, Vice President and Orion Project Manager at Lockheed Martin in Denver, Colorado, remarked that, because Lockheed Martin had worked so closely with its NASA counterparts, the CEV design was much more mature than is typical for programs at the PDR checkpoint. Moreover, before the PDR, Lockheed Martin had completed 300 technical reviews, 100 peer reviews, and 18 subsystem-design reviews.

NASA, “NASA’s Orion Spacecraft Passes Significant Design Milestones,” news release 09-202, 1 September 2009, http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2009/sep/HQ_09-202_Orion_Passes_PDR.html (accessed 15 September 2011); Tariq Malik, “NASA’s New Moonship Passes Review Amid Rocket Uncertainty,” Space.com, 1 September 2009, http://www.space.com/7217-nasa-moonship-passes-review-rocket-uncertainty.html (accessed 15 September 2011).

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