5-day space station build and repair mission that was among the most challenging — and heroic — in shuttle history. The space shuttle touched down on a crisp and bright fall afternoon Wednesday after safely crossing the North American continent. It was the first coast-to-coast re-entry since the Columbia disaster almost five years ago, in which the shuttle disintegrated, killing the crew.
The seven shuttle astronauts and three residents of the international space station teamed up during the docked mission to save a mangled solar wing. It was one of the most difficult and dangerous repairs ever attempted in orbit, but the future of the space station was riding on it and Scott Parazynski pulled it off in a single spacewalk.
“It was an extraordinary feat,” shuttle program manager Wayne Hale said after shaking the astronauts’ hands.
Discovery’s commander, Pamela Melroy, was quick to thank everyone who helped pull off the mission.
“It really was a beautiful moment for NASA,” she said.
Added Parazynski, a mountaineer: “It certainly was a summit push and I think we attained the summit and then some.” On its way home, Discovery crossed over Canada’s British Columbia and made a diagonal descent over Montana, Wyoming, the Great Plains, the Deep South and, finally, down into Florida. NASA opted for the more populous route to avoid a riskier landing in darkness, and to give the crew some extra rest after such a long and strenuous flight.
Double inspections of the spaceship’s wings in orbit confirmed the thermal shielding would hold up to the 3,000-degree Fahrenheit (1,650-degree Celsius) heat of atmospheric re-entry. A quick look at the shuttle on the landing strip showed little if any damage. Discovery’s journey spanned 238 revolutions of Earth and 6.25 million miles.
NASA Administrator Michael Griffin said the flight, from start to finish, demonstrated “NASA at its very best.” He described the landing as “spot on” and also “just as pretty as it gets — if that matters.”
Even before the mission began Oct. 23, the astronauts knew they were in for one of the most challenging and complicated space station construction missions ever. They had no trouble installing a pressurized compartment named Harmony and moving a girder from one side of the space station to another, and even managed to peek into a clogged joint needed to turn the right-sided set of solar wings.
But the flight took a dramatic turn Oct. 30 when it came time to unfurl the solar wings on the relocated girder on the left side of the space station. The first wing popped out fine, but the second one became snagged in a clump of tangled wires and ripped in two places.
Flight controllers rushed to come up with a repair plan. On Saturday — just four days after the damage occurred — Parazynski floated outside with wire cutters, pliers and some homemade tools and fixed the torn wing.
No one had ever ventured so far from the safe confines of the space station before or worked right up against a solar wing coursing with more than 100 volts of electricity and swaying back and forth. He was propped on the end of a 90-foot (28-meter) extension beam that just barely reached the wing’s damaged section.
Parazynski admitted Wednesday night that he had more butterflies than usual before venturing outside that day. The fine print in the procedures sent up from Mission Control read, “`You may expect some sparkling or sparking in the damaged array,’ and I thought, wow, that’s pretty exciting. That’s more exciting than I bargained for.”
Terms of use