August 8, 2005
Well, along with I’m sure lots of other people, I was up at 3 a.m. CDT to watch Discovery come home to Florida. As soon as I turned on NASA TV at 3:05 a.m., I could tell from the body language in the control room at Johnson Space Center in Houston, TX, that they were not going to land on that first opportunity at 3:46 CDT. In order to land, the de-orbit burn must take place approximately an hour before the planned landing, and there was just too much milling around in the control room for the Shuttle to be on its way back into the atmosphere. I got onto the Internet and saw that low clouds at KSC had led to scrubbing the first opportunity of the day. So, off with the TV and laptop and back to bed until 4:45 CDT when I got up again to be watching at the second opportunity. Once again, without any commentary on NASA TV, it was clear that they would not be landing on the second opportunity either. In this instance, even though cloud conditions had improved at KSC, atmospheric conditions there were just too unstable for NASA to commit an hour out to landing there. Earlier NASA managers had made the decision to only land at KSC if they were to land today and had not activated the alternate landing sites at Edwards Air Force Base in California and White Sands, NM. For tomorrow both alternate sites will be activated if landing at KSC is not possible. Eileen Collins and Vegas Kelly now have a few more hours today to practice landings at all three possible landing sites.
Tomorrow’s first opportunity to land at KSC is at 4:07 a.m. CDT, with the second opportunity at 5:43 a.m. CDT. The two opportunities to land at Edwards are at 7:12 a.m. CDT and 8:47 a.m. CDT. The two opportunities to land at White Sands are at 5:39 a.m. CDT and 7:13 a.m. CDT. Some of you may be interested in the ground tracks for the two opportunities to land at KSC.
Below are the long-range, mid-range and close-range ground tracks (provided by NASA) for the 4:07 a.m. CDT landing opportunity.
As would be expected, the ground tracks for the second opportunity are quite different. Below are the three ground-track images for the 5:43 a.m. CDT landing opportunity.
Tomorrow morning I plan to be up by 3:30 a.m. CDT to be ready for the re-entry and landing.
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EDITOR’S NOTE: Dr. Michael Freeman is an Associate Professor of aerospace engineering and mechanics at The University of Alabama. He is attending this week’s launch of the space shuttle Discovery, and will publish daily accounts of the events surrounding the shuttle’s “return to flight” launch. UA graduate James Kelly is the pilot of STS-114, NASA’s first space flight in over two years. Dr. Freeman may be reached by e-mail at michael.freeman@ua.edu.