Collins: watched with son
Posted on 02/07/2003 3:36:24 PM PST by MadIvan
THE crew of Nasa’s next scheduled space shuttle flight is “mentally ready” for the launch and will resume training on Monday, the mission’s commander said yesterday.
Collins: watched with son |
The four astronauts had been expected to take off on board Atlantis on March 1. They were to take three new permanent crew to the International Space Station and bring back the three on board at present.
The flight has been delayed indefinitely while an inquiry into the Columbia disaster is carried out. But Colonel Collins said that she was determined to fulfil her mission as soon as Nasa permitted it.
Asked whether she was apprehensive about flying, she said: “I would have to say no. I want to go fly again. I am mentally ready to go fly again when the shuttle is cleared to fly.
“I want to support the needs of the space programme. If my crew stays, if my mission stays in the current sequence, then I am just thrilled to be on board the next shuttle mission. I believe in human exploration.”
Colonel Collins and one crew member, Soichi Noguchi, a Japanese mission specialist, will resume training next week, but the Japanese Government has said that it will not allow its astronauts to fly again until all safety issues have been resolved.
The other two astronauts, James Kelly, the pilot, and Stephen Robinson, a mission specialist, have been assigned to comfort the families of the Columbia victims.
Nasa has yet to decide whether Atlantis will also carry the replacement crew for the International Space Station. They are the Russians Yuri Malenchenko and Alexander Kaleri and an American, Edward Lu.
Colonel Collins, a former head of Nasa’s Astronaut Safety Branch, volunteered for the Columbia investigation, but was turned down because of her role in the shuttle’s next scheduled flight. “My job now is to make sure my crew is ready to fly,” she said.
She saw the break-up of Columbia on Nasa’s television station at her home in Houston. She was grateful that her two-year-old son, who was with her, was too young to understand what had happened.
She said that she would have to explain to her seven-year-old daughter, however, that she trusted Nasa’s engineers to make her own flight safe. “I’ll tell her I wouldn’t fly it it’s unsafe,” she said. “I know it’s going to be safe to fly.”
Nasa has not said when a space shuttle is likely to fly again, but it remains committed to manned space flight and Atlantis is the next orbiter in line for launch. Schedules were changed after the Challenger disaster in 1986, and another mission may move ahead in the programme.
The Columbia investigation was advanced yesterday by the discovery of high-resolution film of the orbiter’s re-entry to the atmosphere, captured by a US Air Force telescope at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico. The pictures, which have been passed to Nasa, appear to show extensive structural damage to the shuttle’s left wing.
Regards, Ivan
Were you around for the Challenger accident?
(steely)
I'd rather fly with her, thanks.
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