Discovery Relaunches Shuttle Program

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. —  With the thunderous roar of 7.5 million pounds of thrust, America emphatically relaunched its manned space program Tuesday with the shuttle Discovery, sending seven astronauts into orbit for the first time since disaster grounded the fleet 30 months ago.

Although pleased with the launch, NASA engineers expressed some concern about the shuttle’s heat shields, the critical system that was damaged on Columbia’s liftoff in 2003 and that led to the spacecraft’s destruction on reentry into the atmosphere.

They recorded three incidents in Discovery’s 8 1/2 -minute ride into space. NASA cameras and radar found that a 1 1/2 -inch section of heat-resistant tile sheared off from the nose landing-gear door, damage that they could not fully assess without more detailed inspection, said John Shannon, NASA flight operations and integration manager.

The cameras also detected an object floating away from the shuttle after the solid rocket boosters had separated two minutes after launch. And the shuttle’s external tank hit a bird seconds after liftoff.

NASA cannot say whether the events will jeopardize the mission, Shannon said.

“It’s way premature to say there is a serious problem,” he said. But, he added, “I’m not going to sit in here and sugarcoat anything.”

Tens of thousands packed highways near the launch site and millions watched on television as Discovery’s engines painted the morning sky a brilliant gold and shook Florida’s eastern coastline at 10:39 a.m. EDT. The spacecraft quickly disappeared into low clouds.

NASA managers, emerging from one of the darkest periods in the four-decade history of the space program after the loss of the space shuttle Columbia, heaved sighs of relief and slapped each other on the back.

“Take note of what you saw here today,” NASA Administrator Michael D. Griffin said in a news briefing. “The power and majesty of the launch, but also the competence and professionalism, the sheer gall and pluckiness of this team that pulled this program out of the depths of despair 2 1/2 years ago and made it fly.”

NASA had been sorely tested after the Feb. 1, 2003, Columbia accident, with outside critics and many people in the agency questioning whether America’s vaunted space jockeys had lost the can-do engineering skills that put men on the moon in less than a decade and won the space race against the former Soviet Union.

The answer could be read in the faces of top managers gathered at the 140,000-acre launch site under humid, sunny skies.

“It’s a great day, with America back in flight in an American vehicle,” said N. Wayne Hale Jr., NASA’s deputy shuttle program manager.

First Lady Laura Bush, watching from a grandstand filled with 2,500 observers, said it was “pretty terrific” that the first flight after Columbia was commanded by a woman, Eileen Collins.

Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, the first lady’s brother-in-law, said returning to space was important “for the sake of the country.”

During the 13-day mission, the seven-member crew plans to dock with the International Space Station, replace a failed gyroscope and perform three spacewalks, one of which is designed to test shuttle repair techniques developed after Columbia. It will take three days for the shuttle to reach the space station.

After another shuttle test mission in September, NASA hopes to resume assembly of the space station, a job that was put on hold after the Columbia accident.

In the last two years, plans for the station have been scaled back, and NASA is looking to end its involvement in the program not long after the agency finishes building the station.

The shuttle took 8 1/2 minutes to reach orbit. After the main engines shut off, Collins took the control stick and flipped the orbiter over so the crew could photograph the external tank as it drifted away.

The photos will be downloaded to NASA engineers, who will analyze whether any foam insulation fell off the tank and potentially damaged the orbiter.

Shannon said the gouge on the heat-resistant tile occurred in a sensitive area near a seal on the nose landing-gear door. A laser inspection tool will be used today to determine the depth of the dent, which is crucial to determining whether it is a safety hazard.

“Depth is everything,” Shannon said.

Shuttle tiles have sustained 15,000 debris hits and gouges over the 24-year history of the program, most of them harmless.

The object floating away from the shuttle after the solid rocket boosters separated is troubling because NASA cannot yet estimate its size or whether it caused any damage -- or where it came from.

“I don’t know what it was,” Shannon said. “We need to understand that.”

NASA managers said they would begin scanning images of the launch overnight Tuesday. The shuttle’s robotic arm also will be used to inspect the craft. It will take up to six days to analyze the evidence and determine the condition of the orbiter. NASA had 107 cameras, the most to date, trained on the launch.

Collins, the shuttle’s commander and a veteran astronaut, gave an early endorsement of the work done in the last two years to make the shuttle safer. She called the launch the “smoothest ascent” she had experienced.

“We couldn’t ask for a better flight,” she said from orbit.

NASA managers also exuded confidence. Deputy Administrator William F. Readdy rejected any suggestion that the Columbia accident had eroded public support of the space program.

“It is a misnomer that public support ever flagged,” Readdy said.

Tuesday’s launch ended a 2 1/2 -year grounding of the U.S. space program, when NASA investigated the Columbia accident and then made key modifications to the shuttle system.

Columbia disintegrated when superheated gases penetrated its heat-resistant shields as it entered Earth’s atmosphere from orbit. A hole was punched in the leading edge of the craft’s wing during launch by a piece of foam that fell off the external tank.

Though engineers knew the foam had struck the wing and some feared it had damaged the heat shields, senior NASA executives ruled out requests to get photos of the wing through spy satellites. They decided that even if the shuttle were severely damaged, they couldn’t do anything about it.

When Columbia entered the atmosphere, the hot gases melted the internal structure of the wing and pieces of the shuttle began falling off as it crossed over California. By the time it reached Texas, on its way to Florida, the craft began breaking up, raining debris over a corridor hundreds of miles long.

An investigation board concluded that NASA had turned a blind eye to the problem of foam debris since the first shuttle launch in 1981, and that its internal culture had failed to put a premium on safety.

NASA took two years after the investigation to make fixes recommended by the Columbia Accident Investigation Board. Though engineers say they have made the shuttle as safe as possible, they are trying to reduce the number of flights needed to complete assembly of the International Space Station. Griffin has promised to end shuttle flights by 2010.

The agency estimated it spent $1.4 billion on the fixes, including new cameras, tougher windows and improvements to foam application. But the price tag did not include the significant expense of keeping the shuttle workforce on the payroll or the value of Columbia. If those costs were factored in, the accident may have cost more than $10 billion.

Discovery’s launch was postponed twice, from May 22 to July 13, and then from July 13 to Tuesday.

The first launch date was put off after tests showed that ice could build up on the super-cooled surface of the fuel tank containing liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen. After that, NASA installed small heaters. Managers said one small ball of ice was observed, but that it posed no threat to the orbiter.

A second problem, a balky fuel sensor that bedeviled engineers since April, performed perfectly Tuesday.

“This was a great, beautiful, wonderful launch,” Hale said.

The celebratory mood at NASA was tempered by the realization that the launch was only half of the mission.

“One thing [that will be] better than the launch is landing” safely, said Michael D. Leinbach, shuttle launch director.

Harold W. Gehman Jr., the retired Navy admiral who was chairman of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board, said he watched the launch on television. “I am pleased they are flying again,” Gehman said, though he cautioned that he did not want to second-guess NASA’s recovery effort.

Douglas Osheroff, a Stanford University professor and a member of the accident board, said he would have to reserve judgment on whether the agency had fixed defects in its safety culture.

Unlike Readdy, he thought the Columbia accident had damaged the space agency’s goals.

“My concern is that American support for the space program is eroding over time,” Osheroff said. “I don’t think NASA has addressed that.”

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Discovery’s crew

The primary goals of the 13-day Discovery mission are to resupply the International Space Station and to test newly developed techniques for finding and repairing potential damage to the shuttle.

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Charles Camarda

Mission specialist, 53, is a NASA research engineer with nine years’ experience as an astronaut and no previous spaceflights. Camarda will help line up the shuttle with the space station during the docking procedure as part of the rendezvous team.

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Andrew Thomas

Mission specialist, 53, is a NASA research scientist with 13 years’ experience as an astronaut and three previous spaceflights. Thomas will help attach the 50-foot boom extension to the robotic arm for inspection of the underside of the shuttle.

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Eileen Collins

Shuttle commander, 48, is a retired U.S. Air Force pilot with 14 years’ experience as an astronaut and three previous spaceflights. Collins commands the crew and mission. She docks the shuttle with the space station and pilots the shuttle during landing.

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James Kelly

Pilot, 41, is a U.S. Air Force test pilot with nine years’ experience as an astronaut and one previous spaceflight. Kelly serves as a backup pilot to Collins and operates the robotic arm during spacewalks and tile inspections.

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Wendy Lawrence

Mission specialist, 46, is a U.S. Navy helicopter pilot with 13 years’ experience as an astronaut and three previous spaceflights. Lawrence is in charge of equipment transfer to and from the shuttle payload bay and the space station. She is also part of the rendezvous team.

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Soichi Noguchi

Mission specialist, 40, is a Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency aeronautical engineer with nine years’ experience as an astronaut and no previous spaceflights. Noguchi will be the lead spacewalker during the tile repair tests in the cargo bay and space station equipment transfers and repairs.

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Stephen Robinson

Mission specialist, 49, is a NASA research engineer with 10 years’ experience as an astronaut and two previous spaceflights. Robinson serves as the flight

engineer, relaying systems information to the pilots during launch and landing. He is expected to participate in all three spacewalks.

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Source: NASA. Graphics reporting by Brady MacDonald, Thomas H. Maugh II