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#20
by
Chris Bergin
on 05 Oct, 2006 18:59
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#21
by
pip
on 05 Oct, 2006 19:16
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Wow, that is pretty scary. Makes me wonder, though. What is the procedure if the space shuttle is struck by a MMOD and it leaves a hole in the crew compartment causing decompression? Can the shuttle's life support systems go into some mode where they can compensate for a short period of time, just pumping a lot of new air into the cabin? Does the crew attempt to don their pressure suits? Do they have hose interfaces to get air from the shuttle or would they be doomed? If at the ISS, do they all just flee into the station and ditch the ship?
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#22
by
MKremer
on 05 Oct, 2006 19:26
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Decompression flows from in to out - a fairly simply inside pressure patch can take care of that as long as it isn't a more catastrophic hit (under 1/4", which itself would be very large, and very rare damage).
Small 'holes' don't leak that fast at the orbiter crew compartment pressure - unless it's a really big hole (1/2" or larger) there would normally be plenty of time and O2 reserves to find and patch an impact hole.
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#23
by
Jim
on 05 Oct, 2006 20:09
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pip - 5/10/2006 2:59 PM
Wow, that is pretty scary. Makes me wonder, though. What is the procedure if the space shuttle is struck by a MMOD and it leaves a hole in the crew compartment causing decompression? Can the shuttle's life support systems go into some mode where they can compensate for a short period of time, just pumping a lot of new air into the cabin? Does the crew attempt to don their pressure suits? Do they have hose interfaces to get air from the shuttle or would they be doomed? If at the ISS, do they all just flee into the station and ditch the ship?
Yes to all except the last two and they can patch it
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#24
by
Chris Bergin
on 05 Oct, 2006 21:48
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Jim's updated his MSNBC article...same link.
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#25
by
Bubbinski
on 06 Oct, 2006 03:35
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Ah....I didn't know about the orbiter flying attitudes when docked and when undocked. Thanks Jorge. Anyway, another thing to consider is the effect landing at Edwards has on the orbiter processing timeline for the next flight, if the orbiter's flight attitude is good enough to reduce the last day MMOD risks (to the heat shielding esp. RCC) all by itself then it would make sense to wait for available KSC opportunities, as NASA does have the 2010 deadline to consider and sticking close to schedule is critical to meet that and finish the ISS. I'm still happy that Orion won't have the heat shield exposed to the same extent, as it would seem the debris problem in orbit would get worse as we expand human activity into LEO and beyond (as we should), would it not?
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#26
by
dbhyslop
on 06 Oct, 2006 04:03
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MKremer - 5/10/2006 3:09 PM
Small 'holes' don't leak that fast at the orbiter crew compartment pressure - unless it's a really big hole (1/2" or larger) there would normally be plenty of time and O2 reserves to find and patch an impact hole.
It seems to me I read somewhere that time would be measured in hours rather than minutes for a 1/2" hole. I'm curious to know more about the procedures for an event like this: is there a public resource on this or information on L2?
Dan
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#27
by
Orbiter Obvious
on 06 Oct, 2006 05:17
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#28
by
MKremer
on 06 Oct, 2006 07:33
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At least the good news (if you could call it that) is the crew compartment itself is pretty hard to puncture in the first place. It's really a separate pressure vessel mounted inside the outer orbiter skin (which in turn is covered with a variety of TPS materials).
I think the primary concern, as far as time goes, is just locating and exposing the puncture itself to be able to patch it. Most of the crew compartment has a whole lot of 'stuff' (panels, supports, wiring, pipes/tubing, insulation, etc.) between the crew and the aluminum pressure vessel skin.
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#29
by
triddirt
on 06 Oct, 2006 11:45
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NASA released the pictures (obviously at media request), but I couldn't find any comment or press release Can anyone provide a link?
In reading the Times article it was clearly downplayed because of it's location. Almost no sense from NASA on the "lucky" location..
Would any other locations on the orbiter have led to catestrophic damage (from same debris).
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#30
by
rdale
on 06 Oct, 2006 12:10
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#31
by
astrobrian
on 06 Oct, 2006 12:23
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CNNs Miles OBrien Gave this site specific credit for being first with the release of the MMOD picture.
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#32
by
rdale
on 06 Oct, 2006 12:31
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Screwed by Florida Today though - their top story says "The hole's existence was first reported Thursday on NASA's Web site."
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#33
by
Rocket Guy
on 06 Oct, 2006 12:46
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If you read carefully you would see that it is the AP, not Florida Today, who wrote the story. The blog post is just an adaption of that, so they probably had no idea of the hit before this morning.
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#34
by
Chris Bergin
on 06 Oct, 2006 12:51
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#35
by
collectSPACE
on 06 Oct, 2006 13:49
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astrobrian - 6/10/2006 7:06 AM
CNNs Miles OBrien Gave this site specific credit for being first with the release of the MMOD picture.
I didn't see the broadcast myself, but my inbox is full this morning with notes from collectSPACE readers that the photo shown by Miles (and apparently Lou Dobbs last night) carried "Collect Space" as the credit...
On edit, I received a call from CNN this morning confirming that they had been using our site as the source. They were however, getting ready to switch to using NASA.
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#36
by
Orion_Guy
on 06 Oct, 2006 15:10
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rdale - 6/10/2006 8:14 AM
Screwed by Florida Today though - their top story says "The hole's existence was first reported Thursday on NASA's Web site."
Well, it's not totally inaccurate. If you click the nasa.gov link that they provided in the blog, it does take you to a NASA webpage with the photos, and it does have yesterday's date on it.
The inaccuracies comes from how you interpret the word "first" in the sentence. I'm guessing that they meant that NASA first reported it on Thursday. Not that it was reported first anywhere, by anybody until Thursday.
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#37
by
Paul Howard
on 06 Oct, 2006 15:31
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collectspace - 6/10/2006 8:32 AM
astrobrian - 6/10/2006 7:06 AM
CNNs Miles OBrien Gave this site specific credit for being first with the release of the MMOD picture.
I didn't see the broadcast myself, but my inbox is full this morning with notes from collectSPACE readers that the photo shown by Miles (and apparently Lou Dobbs last night) carried "Collect Space" as the credit...
On edit, I received a call from CNN this morning confirming that they had been using our site as the source. They were however, getting ready to switch to using NASA.
That's nice, but I think Astrobrian means NSF when he says this site
Can you confirm that?
It's nice this site didn't change to the NASA photo either as I was expecting the article to change to the NASA.gov photos.
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#38
by
Jeff Bingham
on 06 Oct, 2006 15:38
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I requested an overview from NASA and got this yesterday (Thursday) which doesn't offer a lot of new detail, but is a handy summation of NASA commentary to this point on this:
During routine post flight inspection of Atlantis after landing and return to the Orbiter Processing Facility, a small hole measuring 1/10th inch in diameter was identified on one of the radiator panels lining the inside of the right-hand payload bay door. The damage has been preliminarily identified as caused by micrometeroid orbital debris (MMOD), which passed through the radiator’s face (outer) sheet, interior honeycomb structure, and inner sheet. However, the MMOD did not impact the payload bay door itself. The damage to the radiator did not risk the safety of the crew, orbiter or mission.
Photo/schematic:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/multimedia/sts115/MMOD_impact.html Damage dimensions:
Face sheet .108 inch diameter
Inner face .03 inch diameter with associated .26 inch-long crack
Inner core ~ 1 inch diameter x .5 inch deep (below face sheet)
This MMOD damage is the most significant seen on the orbiter radiators, and most damaging particle ever encountered – second only to the impact detected on the payload bay door following the STS-73 mission of Columbia in October/November 1995. During that flight, the outer surface of the payload bay door thermal protection system flexible reusable surface insulation (FRSI) was impacted by orbital debris leaving a 7mm x 12mm hole in the FRSI.
Ground operations personnel at the Kennedy Space Center, Florida, will repair the damage as soon as a plan is developed/approved, while ensuring the damage site is protected for analysis by orbital debris experts at the Johnson Space Center, Houston. With that in mind, a section of the silver-Teflon thermal tape (outer surface) has been removed from the face sheet for analysis by the Hypervelocity Impact Technology Facility at JSC beginning Friday (Oct. 6). The analysis of residue from the tape pulls will try to determine the chemistry of the MMOD to determine if it was natural (meteoroid) or man made and also to determine the angle of the impact and its velocity.
It is important to remember that the on orbit attitude, or position, of the mated shuttle/station stack was changed to better protect the more vulnerable areas of the shuttle (i.e. TPS). The Program knew this change in attitude would increase the likelihood of other areas (i.e. the shuttle radiators) being impacted by MMOD.
The Space Shuttle Program always has identified micrometeroid orbital debris as a top risk to the vehicles and determined that late inspection of the orbiter thermal protection system is required on all flights for the remainder of the Program to ensure safety of the TPS for entry. The late inspection was instituted on the STS-121 mission in July 2006 and continued with STS-115 in September. The focus of late inspection is to ensure the outer thermal protection system is not compromised for entry and could easily have detected damage of this small size if it had occurred on the wing leading edge Reinforced Carbon Carbon panels.
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#39
by
collectSPACE
on 06 Oct, 2006 15:43
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Paul Howard - 6/10/2006 10:14 AM
That's nice, but I think Astrobrian means NSF when he says this site Can you confirm that?
Right, and as our readers' e-mails (and later CNN itself) confirmed it was cS that means it wasn't NSF, hence my reply to Brian's post...
Can you confirm that?