Republic of Angola (Xyami)

Friday, October 31, 2008

915p 10/30 Update: Endeavour cleared for 11/14 launch; Hubble SM-4 delayed to at least May

=================================

CBS NEWS STS-126 STATUS REPORT: 05
Posted: 9:00 PM, 10/30/08

By William Harwood
CBS News Space Analyst

Changes and additions:

   SR-03 (10/20/08): Atlantis moved back to VAB; Endeavour rollover from pad 39B on tap Friday
   SR-04 (10/23/08): Endeavour hauled from pad 39B to 39A
   SR-05 (10/30/08): Endeavour cleared for 11/14 launch; Hubble mission delayed to at least May

=================================

9:00 PM, 10/30/08, Update: Endeavour cleared for 11/14 launch; Hubble mission delayed to at least May

NASA managers today cleared the shuttle Endeavour for launch Nov. 14 on a space station assembly and servicing mission. But work to test a component needed by the Hubble Space Telescope will not be finished in time for launch aboard the shuttle Atlantis in February. That flight, Hubble Servicing Mission 4, originally was scheduled for launch Oct. 14 but it was delayed when a critical science data relay unit aboard the observatory failed in late September. NASA managers decided to delay the Hubble flight to mid February to give engineers time to test replacement electronic gear, but detailed checkout and problems with the equipment require additional troubleshooting, officials said today, delaying the long-awaited flight to May at the earliest.

"Today, after a thorough review at the Goddard Space Flight Center of the work to go preparing the spare science instrument command and data handling system, the science mission directorate has informed the space operations mission directorate and the space shuttle program that the spare unit will not be available to support a February launch date with acceptable schedule margin and technical risk," Jon Morse, director of astrophysics at NASA headquarters, told reporters.

Engineers now plan to remove Atlantis from its external tank and solid-fuel boosters and give that "stack" to the shuttle Discovery for launch Feb. 12 on a flight to deliver a final set of solar arrays to the international space station. If all goes well, the Hubble mission, aboard Atlantis, could take off around May 12, two weeks before launch of a Russian Soyuz spacecraft May 25 that would carry three crew members to the space station, boosting the lab's crew size to six.

But that schedule assumes engineers at Goddard can resolve anomalies in the replacement Hubble command and data handling subsystem and complete an exhaustive series of tests to verify its flight readiness. Preston Burch, Hubble program manager at Goddard, said he's confident the hardware will be ready to fly in May.

"I'm very confident, personally, that we can troubleshoot the anomaly that we're currently working on and get it ready to fly," Burch said. "We have all the design documentation, all the schematics and everything, we have a very smart group of engineers and technicians that are working on this. This is a glitch on a black box that's well known, well understood, flight proven, so I don't see this as a huge, insurmountable deal. It's not like we're doing something experimental in quantum physics or anything like that. So I suspect we're going to have success with this."

The Hubble trouble began Sept. 27 when the telescope's control unit and science data formatter, or CU/SDF-A, suffered a "hard" failure, preventing ground controllers from receiving data from the science instruments. The A and B channels of the redundant science instrument data handing system are located on the same electronics tray and NASA managers decided to replace the entire unit with a flight spare to restore lost redundancy.

But the flight spare must be tested and recertified, forcing NASA to delay Atlantis' launch from mid October to mid February. In the meantime, after initial problems, engineers successfully activated the B-side electronics aboard Hubble and resumed science operations.

But they have not been so fortunate with the spare hardware on the ground. During initial checks, engineers were able to activate the spare unit's B-side but they had problems with its counterpart. Those problems prompted speculation and reports of potentially serious trouble.

"There's been a lot of speculation in the media and I guess they've been going to sources that don't have any direct knowledge of the condition of the hardware," Burch said. "That's really unfortunate."

He said the spare science instrument command and data handling system "was delivered to NASA in the early 90s and at that time, the acceptance test program had not been completed."

"There was some open paperwork and there were some anomalies that had not been resolved at that time," Burch said. "In the early 90s, we were focused on preparations for the first servicing mission and so did not want to spend the resources and the time on the SIC&DH spare at that time. So we set it aside with the understanding that we would be able to address any of the open issues associated with it and get it in a flight worthy condition in the future should it be needed. And now that time is here. So it's been quite a few years since we've looked at this particular unit."

Along with the spare SIC&DH, Goddard also has an engineering unit used for testing. Here's how Burch explained the issue:

"We have an engineering model SIC&DH that's a single string unit, it doesn't have two sides, an A and a B, but it's built just like the flight unit," Burch said. "But it hasn't gone through the same type of program that the flight unit has gone through and so it's not considered to be a flight unit. But we have had a need over the past 15 years to occasionally use an SIC&DH on the ground for testing instruments and for testing the NICMOS (infrared camera) cooling system that you'll recall we developed in preparation for servicing mission 3B, which we launched in March 2002.

"As a result of that, we availed ourselves of the spare unit and we took some equipment off of it. We removed the B side CU/SDF, the control unit/science data formatter, because we needed one to use on the engineering model SIC&DH. We took off one of the computer processors and put that on and one of the (data interface units). So there was some disassembly of that unit, but it's otherwise in a pristine condition. So when we found ourselves with a need to fly it, we immediately went back and rounded up the (needed hardware). And now we are operating it on the ground.

"We tried to fire up the A side CU/SDF Friday and it didn't handle the commands properly that were being sent to it to turn it on," Burch said. "So after a little bit of trying that, we thought well, we might have a problem with our test configuration. So we thought, why not try the B side and see how that works? So we switched over to the B side and that came up and worked just fine. We tested the B side for a few days and then decided to go back to the A side to try to troubleshoot that.

"Initially the unit did not respond properly but with repeated attempts at commanding the A side, the A side slowly came around and started handling the commands properly. At one point, it was performing as well as the B side, it was handling multiple format-type commands, it was handling data from multiple science instruments ... it was behaving beautifully. Then it stopped behaving like it should and we restarted it. And so it's been kind of a back and forth deal with it.

"What we're trying to do now is to understand what the sensitivity of that unit is to things like temperature. There are a number of suspicions about what could be the cause of the problem. What we suspect is, there's a workmanship or a parts problem on that unit, which is causing this glitch and we're going to need to try to troubleshoot that."

Burch said he was confident engineers will track down the problem, fix it and press ahead with testing.

"Our plan overall takes something on the order of about six-and-a-half months from now," he said. "There's about a month or so devoted to inspecting and resolving any of the performance issues associated with it, about three months for environmental tests and then about two to two-and-a-half months to do final testing and shipping down to Kennedy Space Center."

The primary goals of Hubble Servicing Mission 4 are to install new batteries and stabilizing gyros, two new science instruments, a replacement fine guidance sensor and new insulation. The astronauts also plan to repair two of Hubble's instruments, the Advanced Camera for Surveys and the Space Telescope Imagine Spectrograph.

Three of Hubble current set of six gyroscopes have failed, its six nickel-hydrogen batteries are nearly 20 years old and only hold half the charge they were designed for and its data subsystem no longer has redundancy. Even so, Burch said the observatory should be able to ride out the latest servicing mission delay with no major problems.

"Right now, we are doing science on two gyros and we have one gyro remaining that's a spare that is off," he said. "We should be able to easily go another year with the current gyros we have."

Hubble's batteries currently are operating at half their rated capacity. While that is sufficient for normal operations, engineers have no idea how long they will last.

"Nobody has ever operated nickel-hydrogen batters in orbit as long as Hubble has," Burch said. "The way we use the batteries, we've been able to get smarter and come up with a better regimen for operating them on a daily basis. But that still doesn't get around the fact that they're well past their design lifetime. The prudent thing to do is replace them. But I think we'll be fine with batteries for the next several months."

As for the no-longer-redundant science data handling subsystem aboard Hubble, "I am very confident the B side will continue to operate normally," Burch said.

=================================

Quick-Launch Web Links:

CBS News STS-126 Status Reports:
http://www.cbsnews.com/network/news/space/current.html

CBS News STS-126 Quick-Look Page:
http://www.cbsnews.com/network/news/space/currentglance.html

NASA ISS Expeditions Page:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/index.html

NASA Shuttle Web: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/shuttle/index.html
NASA Station Web: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/station/index.html
Spaceflight Now: http://spaceflightnow.com/index.html
GoogleSatTrack: http://www.lizard-tail.com/isana/tracking/

=================================

Rural Americans for Obama | Ensure Your Vote Gets Counted | Michigan to Restore 5,500 Voters to Rolls

Election 2008
October 30th, 2008
More Election 2008 Coverage »

Evangelicals and Rural Americans Are Breaking Big for Obama
By Robert S. Eshelman, Tomdispatch.com
A mass defection from the Republican Party may be underway in counties that were once GOP strongholds. Call it the reverse Bradley Effect. Read more »

At a campaign stop today Sarah Palin tried to shift the discussion away from the financial crisis, telling voters that national security rather than the economy should be their primary concern when they cast their votes.

According to the New York Times, Palin warned the audience, "In times of economic worry and hardship, the crisis that we're in right now, sometimes it's tempting to put those concerns aside on Election Day, national security issues, but we don't have that luxury."

It's unlikely that potential voters will heed Palin's advice. Concerns about the spiraling economy are hard to cast aside -- for most people, the dark economic forecast brings fears of lay-offs, foreclosures, and vanished life savings. If anything, Palin's comments will most likely be seen for what they are: more fearmongering to distract from the issues important to voters.

The Nasty Truth: Free Trade Agreements May Scuttle Green Jobs Plans
By Joshua Holland, AlterNet
Many of the promises the candidates make on the stump would have trouble passing muster with the WTO -- that's the whole point of "free trade" deals. Read more »

Appeals Court Orders Michigan To Restore 5,500 Voters To Rolls
By American Civil Liberties Union, Advancement Project
Ruling Is Latest Victory In ACLU And Advancement Project Legal Challenge Read more »

Palin Breaks Ranks (Again): Vows to Balance Budget in First Term
By Ali Frick, Think Progress
Palin's promise comes 10 days after the campaign said that it would be nearly impossible. Read more »

Notes From The Swamp -- Florida in the Final Days of the Election
By Stephen Elliott, Huffington Post
One of them said, "I want what I earn, not what you earn." I said that was probably true. Read more »

Vote411.org: A One Stop Shop for All Your Voting Needs
By Staff, AlterNet
Voting information. Don't leave home without it. Read more »

How Electronic Voting Machines Could Steal Our Democracy
By DJK, Brave New Films
Don't think for a second that this couldn't happen. Read more »

26.3 Million Watch Obama's Prime Time Segment (That's a Lot)
By Steve Benen, Washington Monthly
The New York Times notes that the segment "was particularly high-rated in several battleground states." Read more »

Ted Stevens Returns to Alaska to Try and Salvage His Career
By dday, Hullabaloo
Obviously being convicted of a felony is a strike against his record. Read more »

7 Ways to Ensure Your Vote Gets Counted
By Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Greg Palast, Huffington Post
Want your vote to count. Here's what to do. Read more »

Michele Bachman Lies Her Face Off Once Again
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Next up: "Michele Bachmann parts Red Sea." Read more »

McCain Busses in 4,000 School Kids to Fill Crowd
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This happened less than a week out from the election, when the heat of the campaign should be drawing record crowds. Read more »

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Thursday, October 30, 2008

620p 10/30 Update: Hubble servicing mission delayed to next May at the earliest

=================================

CBS NEWS Coverage of Breaking Space News
Posted: 6:20 PM, 10/30/08

By William Harwood
CBS News Space Consultant

Changes and additions:

10/23/08 (11:40 PM): Soyuz TMA-12 lands on target in Kazakhstan; NASA reports crew in good shape
10/30/08 (06:20 PM): Hubble servicing mission delayed to at least May, possibly longer

=================================

6:20 PM, 10/30/08, Update: Hubble servicing mission delayed to at least May, possibly longer

A shuttle mission to service and upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope, originally scheduled for mid October and then delayed to at least Feburary by trouble with an electronic component aboard the observatory, will be delayed until next May at the earliest because of problems preparing a replacement unit for flight, officials said today.

A detailed update on the status of the Hubble mission, as well as an upcoming space station assembly flight, will be posted following a 6:30 p.m. EDT news conference with senior shuttle program managers.

=================================

Quick-Launch Web Links:

CBS News STS-126 Status Reports:
http://www.cbsnews.com/network/news/space/current.html

CBS News STS-126 Quick-Look Page:
http://www.cbsnews.com/network/news/space/currentglance.html

NASA ISS Expeditions Page:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/index.html

NASA Shuttle Web: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/shuttle/index.html
NASA Station Web: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/station/index.html
Spaceflight Now: http://spaceflightnow.com/index.html
GoogleSatTrack: http://www.lizard-tail.com/isana/tracking/

=================================

620p 10/29 Update: Hubble servicing mission delayed to next May at the earliest

=================================

CBS NEWS Coverage of Breaking Space News
Posted: 6:20 PM, 10/30/08

By William Harwood
CBS News Space Consultant

Changes and additions:

10/23/08 (11:40 PM): Soyuz TMA-12 lands on target in Kazakhstan; NASA reports crew in good shape
10/29/08 (06:20 PM): Hubble servicing mission delayed to at least May, possibly longer

=================================

6:20 PM, 10/30/08, Update: Hubble servicing mission delayed to at least May, possibly longer

A shuttle mission to service and upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope, originally scheduled for mid October and then delayed to at least Feburary by trouble with an electronic component aboard the observatory, will be delayed until next May at the earliest because of problems preparing a replacement unit for flight, officials said today.

A detailed update on the status of the Hubble mission, as well as an upcoming space station assembly flight, will be posted following a 6:30 p.m. EDT news conference with senior shuttle program managers.

=================================

Quick-Launch Web Links:

CBS News STS-126 Status Reports:
http://www.cbsnews.com/network/news/space/current.html

CBS News STS-126 Quick-Look Page:
http://www.cbsnews.com/network/news/space/currentglance.html

NASA ISS Expeditions Page:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/index.html

NASA Shuttle Web: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/shuttle/index.html
NASA Station Web: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/station/index.html
Spaceflight Now: http://spaceflightnow.com/index.html
GoogleSatTrack: http://www.lizard-tail.com/isana/tracking/

=================================

Rehabilitation with a little four legged help...that story tonight on The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric

(CBS) QUOTE OF THE DAY
" Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."
- Abraham Lincoln

DID YOU KNOW?
Banana plants are the largest plants on earth without a woody stem. They are actually giant herbs of the same family as lilies, orchids and palms.

TONIGHT ON THE CBS EVENING NEWS

Here’s an early look at what we are working on for tonight’s broadcast from Anchor and Managing Editor, Katie Couric:

Hi everyone:

The campaigns are barreling toward the finish line with just five days left until Election Day. Both Barack Obama and John McCain are focusing on four battleground states, each trying to convince voters that he’s the best man to fix the ailing economy. So, whose message is more effective? Tonight, we'll reveal the results of a brand new CBS News/New York Times poll.

Our team of correspondents is criss-crossing the country along with the candidates. Chip Reid is with the McCain campaign, while Dean Reynolds is traveling with the Obama campaign. We’ll also check in with our Chief Washington correspondent, Bob Schieffer.

If you caught Barack Obama's half-hour special last night, you heard a lot about him as a man - and quite a bit about his proposals. But do they all add up? Can America afford what he’s proposing? Wyatt Andrews has a Reality Check.

Which brings us to taxes. Which candidate’s programs would mean higher taxes for you? Nancy Cordes breaks down the savings - or additional burden - on four families in four different tax brackets.

In California, a statewide ballot initiative is garnering as much attention as the presidential election. It’s called Proposition 8, and would amend the state constitution to ban same-sex marriages. John Blackstone reports on this emotional issue.

Finally: it's an innovative way to help rehabilitate men (and women) - with a lot of help from man's best friend. Mark Strassmann goes inside some of Colorado's harshest prisons … and finds a little tenderness.

See you tonight! Katie
For more information on these stories, please click on the following links:

Obama's Informercial Watched By 30.1M
Click Here

McCain Forced To Gamble On Pennsylvania
evening@cbsnews.com

Here’s an early look at one of the stories we are working on for Friday’s broadcast: Tuna companies haul in big bucks ..while many of their workers make very little money. Did members of Congress keep them earning less than minimum wage? We'll FOLLOW THE MONEY, Friday night, only on The CBS Evening News.

TONIGHT ON DAVID LETTERMAN

Join Dave tonight with Actress Ashley Olsen and Actor Paul Rudd… Plus musical guest John Legend!

FRIDAY MORNING ON THE EARLY SHOW

Along with the top news, we are currently working on the following stories:

FORMER ARKANSAS GOVERNOR MIKE HUCKABEE - So what is John McCain's path to victory? Here to lend insight on the GOP strategy in these final few days is former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee. He's the host of a new show on FOX News called "Huckabee" airing Saturdays at 8pm.

HOW WE GOT HERE - THE EARLY SHOW anchors will be surprised live on the broadcast with a special assignment that will take each of them from the studio to a Destination Unknown. Harry Smith, Julie Chen, Maggie Rodriguez, Russ Mitchell and Dave Price will all be asked to pack their overnight bags with items that can be used in a variety of situations and climates. They haven't been told if they'll need shorts, ski pants or rain slickers. But here's what the anchors will learn: a clue given during the broadcast will hint the destination they're headed for. The anchors will then grab their overnight bags and speed to the airport, and the next time viewers see them they'll be reporting from, well...who knows where?

JOHN GALLIANO’S LATEST FASHIONS- The legendary host of Paris Mode, Marie Christiane Marek joins Julie at the Paris Opera House to discuss John Galliano's latest collection. We will have five different outfits, including hats, modeled for us live. They will discuss fashion at the time the Opera House was built, and discuss a French woman's approach to her wardrobe.

PARIS - THE CITY OF DARKNESS - Paris is known as the “City of lights,” but it also has a dark side. So this Halloween, we explore the macabre side of Paris.

PET COSTUME FASHION SHOW- It's a standard practice to dress up your kids in fun Halloween costumes, but what about your pets? We have six dogs on the plaza from Zootoo.com's Adoption site that are going to be dressed to the nines. All of the dogs will be available for viewers and plaza guests to adopt. Kids will judge which dog has the best costume and the winner will get a basket of fresh baked Halloween treats.

PUMPKIN CARVING - Our Master Pumpkin Carver, Gene Granata returns with four more craved pumpkins---the faces of our anchors: Julie, Maggie, Harry and Dave. They will be unveiled on the show.

PARIS CHOCOLATIER - It's been enjoyed by humans for at least three millennia and it's still going strong. Doctors say it's good for our mental and physical health; it's frequently included in military rations to help boost energy and morale; it's considered an aphrodisiac: women crave it and men buy it by the ton to keep them happy! Paris is home to some of the finest chocolate-makers in the world - and to some of the most demanding chocolate lovers. It's also been used by couturiers to produce incredible edible clothes, as shown in the fashion show at the Salon du Chocolat in Paris this week.

PHANTOM OF THE OPERA-20 YEARS ON BROADWAY--PERFORMANCE - After 20 years and over 8,000 shows, 'The Phantom of the Opera' remains the longest running musical in Broadway history. And here with us today is Howard McGillin, better known as 'the Phantom", to perform one of musical theater's most celebrated numbers, "The Music of the Night."

If you would like more information on any of these stories or the broadcast, please click on the following address and e-mail us: earlyshow@cbs.com

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