Word: mission
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...preliminary analysis is that the damage is not very deep and this is not something we're very worried about," said mission manager LeRoy Cain at an afternoon press conference on Tuesday. "It looks like something just chattered away on the edge there...
...does turn out that the damage is more serious than that, it will be occurring on a particularly bad mission. Most of the shuttles' trips to orbit these days are for visits with the ISS. The station is a roomy place - by spacecraft standards at least - and if a shuttle's underside is found to be too badly damaged to allow a safe re-entry, the astronauts could simply bunk down in the ISS until another shuttle or Russian Soyuz ships could bring them home...
...that's not an option on this mission. The Hubble orbits at an altitude of about 350 miles and an inclination of 28.5 degrees. The ISS orbits lower - roughly 220 miles above the earth - and at a much sharper 51.6-degree angle. It's not hard for a spacecraft to change its altitude, but shifting its orbital plane is monstrously hard and energy-consuming, and the shuttle would never be able to pull off such a maneuver. So, the fallback for this crew is another whole orbiter, the shuttle Endeavour, which has been poised on Pad B at Cape Canaveral...
...some emphasized that the Faculty needs to be wary of the impact on its educational mission as the administration initiates more cuts in the future...
...inevitable, from the looks of it, that a certain amount of that is going to happen,” Thomas said. “One just has to try and limit it so that it doesn’t lead to the deterioration of the [educational] mission...