Spectacular night launch for Discovery

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December 19, 2006

Beate Czogalla The Union-Recorder Tue Dec 19, 2006, 10:30 AM EST

Did you see a slow-moving bright meteor in the southern sky last Saturday night? If so, you may have caught the spectacular night launch of the Space Shuttle Discovery, en route to the International Space Station. You read correctly: if the weather conditions are just right, night launches are visible from Mill-edge-ville!

After the Columbia disaster, NASA decided night launches were too risky, since good observations of potentially dangerous foam debris were hard to do. But with improvements to the foam layer of the external tank and plenty of outside cameras, some mounted on the spacecraft itself, the risk was now deemed acceptable. Mission schedulers breathed a collective sigh of relief, because their job suddenly became a lot easier.

The shuttle may seem free as a bird floating out there in space, but it has to follow the laws of physics and orbital mechanics. To reach a specific orbit — such as the one of the International Space Station — you have to launch at a specific time. Unfortunately, many of those so-called launch windows occur at night, and with the day-launch-only restriction, this cuts down the number of good launch times significantly, creating further delays in space station construction.

With Discovery’s successful trip to orbit, the confidence levels have increased a good deal, and space buffs may be treated to those awesome firework displays more often in the future.

By the time you read this, Discovery will have docked at the space station and the astronauts will be busy with their work schedule. The orbiter has ferried a major truss array into space, and the shuttle’s remote arm will actually hand the truss off to the space station’s arm. It will be one enormous precision exercise — one false move and some major damage could occur. Two spacewalking astronauts, one American and one from Sweden, will later install the truss — a task they have rehearsed many times in a giant water tank on Earth.

Keep track of all the excitement and latest news for mission STS-116 at http://spaceflightnow.com/shuttle/sts116/

Beate Czogalla is the Associate Professor of Theater Design in the Department of Music and Theater at Georgia College & State University. She has had a lifelong interest in space exploration and has been a Solar System Ambassador for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory/ NASA for many years. She can be reached at our_space2@yahoo.com

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