1 00:00:01,520 --> 00:00:04,290 \h Space shuttle Atlantis stands ready to launch the European-built 2 00:00:04,290 --> 00:00:08,210 \h Columbus laboratory to the International Space Station. 3 00:00:08,210 --> 00:00:12,620 \h The crew has arrived and the countdown is under way. Live from 4 00:00:12,620 --> 00:00:20,130 \h NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, this is the STS-122 Mission Update. 5 00:00:20,130 --> 00:00:22,380 \h ALLARD BEUTEL: Good morning. Today is Wednesday, Feb. 6, 6 00:00:22,380 --> 00:00:25,640 \h and you are looking live at Launch Pad 39A. 7 00:00:25,640 --> 00:00:30,240 \h Space shuttle Atlantis stands pointed toward space and a rendezvous with the International Space Station. 8 00:00:30,240 --> 00:00:33,540 \h I'm Allard Beutel, NASA news chief here at Kennedy. 9 00:00:33,540 --> 00:00:37,190 \h Thanks for joining us this morning before the launch of STS-122. 10 00:00:37,190 --> 00:00:40,800 \h This is an exciting time for NASA as the agency launches its first mission 11 00:00:40,800 --> 00:00:44,490 \h of the year and adds a critical piece to the International Space Station. 12 00:00:44,490 --> 00:00:48,710 \h The seven astronauts who will fly aboard Atlantis arrived here on Monday and the 13 00:00:48,710 --> 00:00:53,780 \h countdown is moving methodically toward a 2:45 p.m. Eastern time liftoff tomorrow. 14 00:00:53,780 --> 00:00:57,560 \h Commander Steve Frick and his crew will eat breakfast just before sunrise on launch day 15 00:00:57,560 --> 00:01:02,110 \h before putting on their orange pressure suits and heading to the launch pad. 16 00:01:02,110 --> 00:01:05,300 \h This is exactly the same thing they would have done in December 17 00:01:05,300 --> 00:01:08,420 \h if a faulty connector in the engine cutoff system had not delayed 18 00:01:08,420 --> 00:01:12,870 \h two launch attempts before the external tank was completely filled in December. 19 00:01:12,870 --> 00:01:15,920 \h Joining us this morning we have NASA Test Director Steve Payne to talk 20 00:01:15,920 --> 00:01:20,000 \h about that exact fix and what we're going to do now. Steve, thanks for joining us. 21 00:01:20,000 --> 00:01:21,180 \h STEVE PAYNE: Thank you. Good morning. 22 00:01:21,180 --> 00:01:26,550 \h BEUTEL: And just in case people don't know what a NASA test director does or is, 23 00:01:26,550 --> 00:01:29,500 \h besides you, what do you guys do for us? 24 00:01:29,500 --> 00:01:32,740 \h PAYNE: Well, the NASA test directors are responsible for the planning and 25 00:01:32,740 --> 00:01:37,640 \h execution of the shuttle launch countdowns. So we, in effect, orchestrate and run the countdown. 26 00:01:37,640 --> 00:01:40,040 \h BEUTEL: And which is going really well right now. 27 00:01:40,040 --> 00:01:41,040 \h PAYNE: So far, so good. 28 00:01:41,040 --> 00:01:45,470 \h BEUTEL: Well, let's see. We call it here at NASA the engine cutoff system. It goes by the acronym ECO. 29 00:01:45,470 --> 00:01:49,490 \h What is it and why do we need it? 30 00:01:49,490 --> 00:01:55,570 \h PAYNE: Well, the engine cutoff system is one of two methods by which we tell the main engines when to shut off. 31 00:01:55,570 --> 00:01:59,360 \h The computers on the main engine controllers are the primary system and they, 32 00:01:59,360 --> 00:02:04,240 \h after a certain amount of time, tell the engines it's time to shut down. 33 00:02:04,240 --> 00:02:07,650 \h The backup system is this engine cutoff system and it consists of a number 34 00:02:07,650 --> 00:02:10,060 \h of sensors on the bottom of the external tank that, 35 00:02:10,060 --> 00:02:16,310 \h when they register that they are dry, they pass the signal to the engine controller to shut down. 36 00:02:16,310 --> 00:02:19,360 \h BEUTEL: And we've had some intermittent problems with them. 37 00:02:19,360 --> 00:02:21,840 \h PAYNE: Yes we have. 38 00:02:21,840 --> 00:02:25,830 \h BEUTEL: And as anybody knows with a car or any kind of problem like that, something that's 39 00:02:25,830 --> 00:02:29,400 \h intermittent, that's some of the worst problems to deal with because you take it in, 40 00:02:29,400 --> 00:02:32,900 \h it's suddenly working, and that's what we had with several flights. 41 00:02:32,900 --> 00:02:36,850 \h PAYNE: That's true. This was an unexplained problem for a couple of missions. 42 00:02:36,850 --> 00:02:38,920 \h We struggled to find out where the source was. 43 00:02:38,920 --> 00:02:43,850 \h We thought initially that the sensors themselves were bad, but we couldn't find the source. 44 00:02:43,850 --> 00:02:49,080 \h Fortunately, or unfortunately, this last mission we were able to finally determine where the fault lay. 45 00:02:49,080 --> 00:02:51,110 \h BEUTEL: And speaking of which, we happen to have what we think is 46 00:02:51,110 --> 00:02:56,390 \h actually where the fault lay, and in this case, what did you do to fix it? And what is this? 47 00:02:56,390 --> 00:03:00,470 \h PAYNE: Well, this is the feedthrough connector that goes between the 48 00:03:00,470 --> 00:03:04,580 \h inside of the external tank and the outside of the external tank. 49 00:03:04,580 --> 00:03:08,930 \h And there's a connector on either side that connects on the inside to the engine cutoff 50 00:03:08,930 --> 00:03:10,760 \h sensors at the bottom of the tank, 51 00:03:10,760 --> 00:03:16,530 \h and on the outside to the avionics on the orbiter. What we found is that once 52 00:03:16,530 --> 00:03:21,000 \h we cooled the inside connector by filling the inside of the tank with liquid 53 00:03:21,000 --> 00:03:25,660 \h hydrogen, the outside part of the connector would also get cold and the 54 00:03:25,660 --> 00:03:30,910 \h airspace between the socket and the pins of the connector would, 55 00:03:30,910 --> 00:03:36,050 \h the air inside would freeze and it would be an insulator between the two metal parts. 56 00:03:36,050 --> 00:03:39,000 \h And so we'd have intermittent signals coming and going. 57 00:03:39,000 --> 00:03:44,300 \h What was fortunate about the failure we saw last time is that we had many failing at the same time, 58 00:03:44,300 --> 00:03:47,980 \h which pointed directly to this being the cause of the problem. 59 00:03:47,980 --> 00:03:50,960 \h BEUTEL: And in that particular case, what did you guys do to fix it? 60 00:03:50,960 --> 00:03:56,620 \h PAYNE: Well, what we did, we did a little research and found that our folks 61 00:03:56,620 --> 00:04:01,190 \h across the river in the Atlas/Centaur Program had a very similar, 62 00:04:01,190 --> 00:04:05,090 \h identical problem practically. In their tank, they had the same issue with intermittent signals. 63 00:04:05,090 --> 00:04:12,020 \h What they have done, they removed that airspace by soldering the pins to the sockets. 64 00:04:12,020 --> 00:04:13,970 \h There's a video you're watching now. 65 00:04:13,970 --> 00:04:18,430 \h We removed our feedthrough connector and the external connector, 66 00:04:18,430 --> 00:04:25,320 \h cut it off, spliced in a new one which was soldered solidly between the feedthrough and the connector. 67 00:04:25,320 --> 00:04:29,890 \h That way there was metal to metal to metal contact and we no longer had the problem 68 00:04:29,890 --> 00:04:33,860 \h with air freezing inside and having an intermittent connection. 69 00:04:33,860 --> 00:04:37,120 \h BEUTEL: And anyone at home who doesn't know about spaceflight hardware and the time 70 00:04:37,120 --> 00:04:43,070 \h it takes to do these fixes, you think, okay, it took you two months to be able to do that. 71 00:04:43,070 --> 00:04:47,930 \h But actually, when it comes to spaceflight hardware and modifications, that's pretty quick. 72 00:04:47,930 --> 00:04:52,360 \h PAYNE: That was pretty quick. Fortunately, we had a couple of missions we've seen this, 73 00:04:52,360 --> 00:04:56,270 \h we didn't understand it but we had some data we had gathered. On the initial 74 00:04:56,270 --> 00:04:59,790 \h couple of launch attempts for STS-122, we gathered a lot more data. 75 00:04:59,790 --> 00:05:02,400 \h And then we had a tanking test we performed in December, 76 00:05:02,400 --> 00:05:05,330 \h where we put instrumentation along the data path back and forth, 77 00:05:05,330 --> 00:05:09,320 \h and we were able to isolate it to this one connector. 78 00:05:09,320 --> 00:05:12,570 \h That was the smoking gun we were looking for and we were able 79 00:05:12,570 --> 00:05:15,170 \h to get the solution from our friends across the river. 80 00:05:15,170 --> 00:05:19,470 \h BEUTEL: So other than having Atlantis safely in orbit and heading to the space station, 81 00:05:19,470 --> 00:05:22,660 \h when will you know that you really have gotten the fix done? 82 00:05:22,660 --> 00:05:26,600 \h PAYNE: Well, we're pretty confident that this is the fix. Everything else had worked. 83 00:05:26,600 --> 00:05:30,460 \h We isolated to this and we implemented a known good fix. 84 00:05:30,460 --> 00:05:34,080 \h But we'll know for sure after we tank on Thursday morning and 85 00:05:34,080 --> 00:05:37,160 \h give the system enough time to cool down. 86 00:05:37,160 --> 00:05:39,720 \h Once we get beyond the point at which we would have seen these 87 00:05:39,720 --> 00:05:41,610 \h intermittent connections, we should be home free. 88 00:05:41,610 --> 00:05:44,740 \h BEUTEL: A lot of news reports came out last week; 89 00:05:44,740 --> 00:05:47,920 \h we had another thing crop up that people may have heard about, 90 00:05:47,920 --> 00:05:51,810 \h flexible hoses in the cooling system for Atlantis. Tell me about those. 91 00:05:51,810 --> 00:05:57,250 \h PAYNE: Out in space, you have to reject your heat through radiators in the payload bay doors. 92 00:05:57,250 --> 00:06:03,150 \h And the way that it works, we have Freon that flows through plates under our avionics, 93 00:06:03,150 --> 00:06:06,890 \h our electrical boxes, and they take the heat away, and we send it to via some 94 00:06:06,890 --> 00:06:11,760 \h hoses to the radiator panels on the doors. I believe we have video on the closing of our payload bay doors. 95 00:06:11,760 --> 00:06:16,280 \h You see the radiators on either side of our Columbus module. 96 00:06:16,280 --> 00:06:23,880 \h There's a hose that carries the Freon from the body of the orbiter into these radiator panels, 97 00:06:23,880 --> 00:06:26,560 \h and when we closed the right side door, the starboard door, 98 00:06:26,560 --> 00:06:30,210 \h we noticed that the hose was not retracting into its box like it should have. 99 00:06:30,210 --> 00:06:36,420 \h In fact, it was bending. And you'll hear the term "omega bend," which is much like the Greek letter Omega, 100 00:06:36,420 --> 00:06:42,230 \h where rather than go into its case, it bent some. 101 00:06:42,230 --> 00:06:47,040 \h We have analyzed it and, in fact, here you see here, we used this homemade 102 00:06:47,040 --> 00:06:51,170 \h pole where we guided the hose back into its proper location. 103 00:06:51,170 --> 00:06:56,260 \h We feel it's fairly safe to do and we don't expect to have any problems with this hose. 104 00:06:56,260 --> 00:06:59,480 \h It's been X-rayed and leak checked and we've had these in 105 00:06:59,480 --> 00:07:03,370 \h previous flights without any issue. So we have no concerns about it for this particular flight. 106 00:07:03,370 --> 00:07:05,820 \h BEUTEL: And just have to mention that pole for a second. 107 00:07:05,820 --> 00:07:08,310 \h It looks suspiciously like a pool skimmer pole. 108 00:07:08,310 --> 00:07:12,730 \h PAYNE: It looks a whole lot like a pool skimmer pole with some padding on it and some tape. 109 00:07:12,730 --> 00:07:15,580 \h BEUTEL: I guess sometimes the best solutions are the simplest ones. 110 00:07:15,580 --> 00:07:16,970 \h PAYNE: Absolutely. 111 00:07:16,970 --> 00:07:21,450 \h BEUTEL: Actually, in that video, as well, we saw the Columbus laboratory. 112 00:07:21,450 --> 00:07:23,460 \h How has it held up in the past couple of months? 113 00:07:23,460 --> 00:07:28,240 \h PAYNE: It has had a fairly easy time since they were ready to go during the first couple of launch attempts. 114 00:07:28,240 --> 00:07:33,290 \h All they've really had to do is maintain a clean gas purge on their equipment to make sure it didn't get dirty. 115 00:07:33,290 --> 00:07:37,490 \h They replaced the covers on the optics to make sure none of that got dust on it 116 00:07:37,490 --> 00:07:40,510 \h But otherwise, they haven't had a whole lot else to do. 117 00:07:40,510 --> 00:07:43,040 \h BEUTEL: Alright, well, Stephen, we appreciate you coming down and 118 00:07:43,040 --> 00:07:44,880 \h giving us a quick update on where we are, 119 00:07:44,880 --> 00:07:46,410 \h and we're in a good position to launch tomorrow, aren't we? 120 00:07:46,410 --> 00:07:47,320 \h PAYNE: Absolutely. 121 00:07:47,320 --> 00:07:49,870 \h BEUTEL: And from your words to the launch director's ear. 122 00:07:49,870 --> 00:07:55,140 \h A reminder now to stay with nasa.gov and NASA TV for all your mission information. 123 00:07:55,140 --> 00:08:01,320 \h Launch coverage begins tomorrow at 5:15 a.m. Eastern on NASA TV and continues through liftoff. 124 00:08:01,320 --> 00:08:06,300 \h You can also log on to www.nasa.gov/shuttle for continuous updates 125 00:08:06,300 --> 00:08:08,350 \h of the countdown on our launch blog. 126 00:08:08,350 --> 00:08:11,910 \h There will also be video highlights and stunning photographs of the liftoff.