TIM FURNISS / LONDON
Meanwhile, Soyuz space taxi docks with ISS, allowing two-man maintenance team to replace Expedition Crew 6
Investigators are close to pinpointing the location of the breach in the left wing leading-edge that led to the break-up of the Space Shuttle Columbia during re-entry on 1 February. The lower half of a leading-edge reinforced carbon-carbon panel, or a section of one of the T-seals between the panels, was almost certainly missing when Columbia began its re-entry.
"We're probably within 30 inches of where the actual breach occurred," says Columbia accident investigation board member Roger Tetrault. "We're closing in."
The top half of the suspect panel - and possibly parts of the seals either side - have been recovered and show evidence of extreme heat damage. Molten metal has been sprayed on to the back of the panel fragment, making it a likely area for the breach, which allowed superheated air to enter the wing.
The hole in the wing was at least 645cm2 (100in2), says Tetrault, and evidence is "fairly solid" that it resulted from the impact of foam insulation shed by the external tank 82s after lift-off on 16 January. The board expects to have a working hypothesis within two weeks, although critical tests of foam impacts on actual leading-edge panels and seals are not due until June.
Meanwhile, Russia's Soyuz TMA-2 space taxi docked with the International Space Station (ISS) on 28 April, two days after launch from Baikonur. TMA-2 carried Russian Yuri Malenchenko and NASA's Edward Lu, making up the modified Expedition Crew 7. The sixth crew - Ken Bowersox, Nikolai Budarin and Don Pettit - were due to return to Earth on 4 May aboard the Soyuz TMA-1 craft already docked to the ISS.
The normal three-person crew has been reduced to two to conserve resources on the ISS during the grounding of the US Space Shuttle fleet. As a result, the crew's mission is expected to be more maintenance than scientific. The crew will remain on the ISS until October, when they will be replaced by Michael Foale and Alexander Kaleri aboard TMA-3.
NASA has confirmed that the next Space Shuttle mission, expected to take place no earlier than 2004, will be STS 114 Atlantis - the flight that was originally scheduled to follow STS107 Columbia.
The mission - which may carry three new crew to the ISS - will be commanded by Eileen Collins and will carry just four flightcrew. STS 114 is expected to be a modest mission, carrying a multipurpose logistics module to the ISS.
Source: Flight International
