Space shuttle schedule to be modified?

Although preparations for STS-131 mission are following their normal course for blast-off on 5 April, the managers responsible for NASA’s space plane flight schedule are working on a possible postponement of STS-134. This flight is due to take the AMS, Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, experiment to the ISS at the end of July. However, an AMS ground test in Europe has apparently revealed a thermal insulation problem. Depending on the time lapse required for solving this unexpected event, the blast-off dates for the last two space shuttle missions (133 and 134) could therefore be modified. At the same time, several of Florida’s elected representatives have declared themselves in favour of extending the space shuttle flights beyond those currently slated and of voting the necessary budgets in Congress (about 2.4 billion dollars per year). John Shannon, who directs the space shuttle programme at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, has also publicly stated that such an extension was technically and logistically possible.

Published on 11 March 2010