The Long Kiss Good-Night

March 17, 2008

With the addition of Japan to the growing abode in Earth orbit, it’s taking longer and longer for International Space Station crew to say hello and good-bye to ground control teams every day.

First there’s the wakup call from Mission Control in Houston. Then, the radio link passes to the U.S. science ground control team in Huntsville, Alabama.

A hop across the ocean brings Europe’s flight control center in Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany in queue for an orbital tag-up, and then it’s on to Russia’s Mission Control Center in Korolev, a suburb of Moscow. Last up is the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Tsukuba Space Center, located outside of Tokyo.

At each stop around the world, flight controllers chat with the crew, giving instructions for the day, asking about developments and providing news from home. At night, there’s another round of talks to settle things down for the day and prepare for tomorrow.

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Space -- NOT

February 09, 2008

If Britney Spears wants some privacy, I have a suggestion for her: get NASA to fly her to the space station.

The space agency so vehemently protects the privacy of astronauts that even if they have to postpone a spacewalk, which costs something like a bazillion dollars a minute, because someone is sick, they won’t talk about it.

Even if the spacewalker, who has been training for more than a year, is sidelined, and a backup has to take his place, they won’t talk about it.

And even if the mission then has to be extended to make up for the extra day, they won’t talk about it.

In fact, those loyal folks at NASA will sit at a podium, look you straight in the eye and tell you that the medical situation has no impact to the mission.

In a strained press conference with reporters at the Johnson Space Center, John Shannon, the co-chairman of NASA’s mission management team, went on the defensive about the changes in the flight plan, saying only that a crew “medical issue” was behind the decision to delay installation of Europe’s Columbus laboratory a day.

The module was launched aboard space shuttle Atlantis on Thursday and was scheduled to be attached to the station during a spacewalk Sunday.

The shuttle arrived at the station Saturday afternoon.

During the rendezvous -- a very busy and tense time aboard the shuttle -- the crew called Mission Control to arrange for a private medical conference.

“It was a little bit of a surprise to us,” Shannon said.

A couple of hours later, NASA told the crew on its publicly distributed television broadcast that the spacewalk to install the module will be delayed to Monday and that astronaut Stan Love will take the place of Hans Schlegel, a 56-year old European Space Agency flier who was returning to space after a 15-year hiatus.

Shannon refused to even confirm it was Schlegel who was ill, although a European Space Agency representative did shortly after the briefing ended.

Here are other questions Shannon declined to answer:

*Was the medical condition present prior to launch?
*Is it contagious?
*Did it involve more than one person?

“You guys can fish all day, but I won’t bite,” he told us.

In what I think he would consider going out on a limb, Shannon did tell us the situation wasn’t life threatening.

But at least he didn’t try to pass it off as a matter of national security.