With Atlantis mission, shuttle's last days draw nearer

The latest launch, set for Friday, brings misty-eyed NASA engineers one step closer to the end of a flight program that's endured for 26 years.

By Peter N. Spotts | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

from the June 8, 2007 edition

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After a two-month delay, the space shuttle Atlantis and its six-member crew are set for launch Friday evening on an 11-day mission that is vital to completing the International Space Station.

This trip is the third to beef up the station's ability to provide electric power to European and Japanese laboratory modules, slated to begin arriving later this year. If all goes well, the work will put the station on track to receive a final set of solar panels and batteries next July and to support a crew of six, rather than three, in 2009. By July 2010, the station should be complete.

That timetable, though, brings a bittersweet recognition that Atlantis, Endeavor, and Discovery are fast approaching their collective curtain call. Completion of the space station means an end to the shuttle program, and for veteran NASA engineers who've worked on it for most of their careers, it's reminiscent of parting with Ol' Betsy.

"It's a little bit like taking your old car that you really have enjoyed ... and trading it in on a new one," says Wayne Hale, the shuttle's program manager. "The space shuttle is such an incredibly capable vehicle, and so many of us have spent so many years working on it. We're going to be very sad to retire it. But ... there are certain things about the space shuttle that we just can't make better" or safer.

The ramping down is already apparent. Workers at NASA's Michaud facility in New Orleans are welding and adding foam insulation to the last bullet-shaped external fuel tank, which feeds the orbiters' voracious main engines. In Canoga Park, Calif., workers are building the last one of those engines. Charts displaying orbiter assignments show a large blank for Atlantis after September 2008. When that mission ends, NASA will ground the orbiter and cannibalize it for spare parts.

President Bush's Vision for Space Exploration calls for a new set of rockets and capsules designed to send astronauts to the moon and perhaps to Mars. Moving on to the Constellation program "is very exciting," says Mr. Hale, citing "some new bells and whistles and new capabilities."

For Michael Suffredini, NASA's space station program manager, the concerns are a bit more pragmatic. "We'll miss the payload capacity," he says. The shuttle's cargo capacity is much greater than anything else currently launching to the space station, he notes. Indeed, two of the last three shuttle missions are contingency flights to bring vast quantities of supplies to the station in case other countries can't provide sufficient freight capacity on their spacecraft.

Still, the shuttle show is far from over. Hale notes that more shuttle flights remain than all of the lunar-landing missions that the Apollo program mustered. The pace is picking up, too. In 2005, NASA launched one mission, marking its return to flight after the Columbia accident in February 2003. Last year, the agency lofted three missions. This year, it scheduled five, although Atlantis's launch delay has whittled that back to four. Five are slated for next year.

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