By CRAIG COVAULT/KENNEDY SPACE CENTER

Aviation Week & Space Technology 01/20/2003

Israel's first astronaut and a complex array of commercial and basic research experiments, including those from Israel, Europe, China and Japan, have begun a 17-day space mission on the shuttle Columbia following launch here Jan. 16, under heavy security against potential terrorist attack.

That security included F-15 fighter patrols over Kennedy Space Center and central Florida supported by AWACS, Army Avenger surface-to-air missile systems cued by specialized ground radars, and robust sea and ground forces, including heavily-armed helicopters.

"As a science mission dedicated to over 80 different research objectives, 18 months in the making . . . our expectations are very high for this mission," said Sean O'Keefe, NASA administrator. "And it is an historic international flight with the first Israeli astronaut."

Israeli Air Force Col. Ilan Ramon is beginning initial work in space with the flight's Israeli Meidex visible/infrared camera system to image dust blowing off the Middle East. That climate-related work is being aided by Israeli aircraft dust-sampling flights and ground-based observations.

SHUTTLE PROGRAM manager Ron Dittemore declined to discuss whether U.S. or Israeli intelligence were aware of any specific terrorist threats related to the STS-107 mission.

But in addition to the shuttle and its crew, the nearly 300 Israeli aerospace, military and science and technology guests here for the launch posed an additional security challenge. They were housed together in a Cocoa Beach hotel sealed off by a heavy ground force that included rooftop sharpshooters, bomb-sniffing dogs and patrols of nearby beaches by officers on horseback. The director general of the Israeli space agency, Aby Hareven, joked that all the security made him feel "like the Israeli prime minister," but that the Israeli contingent sincerely appreciated the U.S. protection.

Ramon, the son of a Holocaust survivor, is generating substantial excitement in Israel, Hareven said. His flight is specifically being used to spearhead an aerospace education effort that includes 25 hr. of space-related education in Israeli schools. As a follow-on to Ramon's flight, Israel is also proposing small science investigations for flight on the International Space Station, such as a more advanced version of the Meidex cameras.

Counting the U.S./Russian ISS crew in the midst of a four-month flight, and including the seven-member U.S./Israeli STS-107 flight, a total of 10 space crewmembers from three countries are performing research in orbit this week.

STS-107 is the first shuttle laboratory mission since 1999 that is not going to the ISS. But its Spacehab Research Double Module (RDM) and Freestar pallet science payloads, including advanced combustion module and other science, are directly related to transitioning NASA science operations to the station (AW&ST Jan. 13, p. 424). The U.S. Congress mandated the mission as a way of stimulating microgravity science research when such studies are limited on the ISS because of construction priorities.

The flight was cleared for launch after several weeks of materials analysis found that a cracked stainless steel bearing, like that found in a propellant line strut assembly in the orbiter Discovery, would cause no harm even if a similar problem was hidden on Columbia.

Mission commander USAF Col. Rick Husband and copilot Navy Cdr. William McCool piloted Columbia into a 150-naut.-mi. orbit inclined 39 deg., following liftoff on more than 7-million-lb. thrust at 10:39 a.m. EST. Astronaut Kalpana Chawla, originally from India, was the center seat flight engineer, assisted on the flight deck by physician astronaut Navy Capt. David Brown.

During launch, Ramon rode in the middeck with payload commander USAF Lt. Col. Michael Anderson and physician astronaut Navy Capt. Laurel Clark.

With an overall vehicle weight of about 5 million lb., and a specific orbiter/payload weight of nearly 264,000 lb., the ascent used an orbital maneuvering system (OMS) assist similar to that employed on heavy missions to the ISS.

The two 6,000-lb.-thrust Aerojet OMS engines were ignited 10 sec. after solid rocket booster separation at about Mach 3 and burned for 1 min. 42 sec., until the combined two OMS and three Rocketdyne main engines had propelled Columbia to about Mach 6. The OMS engines were then shut down and the ascent completed to Mach 24 on the SSMEs generating a total of 1.5-million-lb. thrust.

The mission is carrying 8,300 lb. of science hardware, most of it in the 20,000-lb. RDM, with the rest spread between the shuttle middeck and Freestar pallet bridging the aft payload bay. The 7,000-lb. extended-duration orbiter (EDO) pallet with eight additional fuel cell hydrogen and oxygen tanks is also in the payload bay to sustain orbiter electrical operations for more than two weeks aloft.

BPREPARATION OF THE flight's diverse science complement was also affected by security. Many of the flight's biological specimens had to be loaded as late as 30-40 hr. before launch, and some of the researchers are non-U.S. citizens who, because of more strict regulations, could not get easy access into Kennedy preparation labs--sometimes in the middle of the night. To circumvent the problem, the Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne, 35 mi. south of Kennedy, made floor space available to about 80 European Space Agency personnel for the preparation and in-orbit monitoring of about 20 ESA experiments.

With Columbia mounted vertically on Pad 39A, the stowage of specimens that could only be taken on board within a few days of launch also posed a challenge. In an operation that was practiced for nine months, Boeing workers positioned an electric hoist in the shuttle middeck to lower a technician on a harness through the shuttle middeck hatch, down the tunnel into the RDM. On repeated trips up and down he stowed 21 science packages. An additional 14 were added to middeck lockers where the access was easier.

The mission is carrying nearly 90 science payloads and Spacehab has leased 18% of the RDM's 4-ton payload capacity to commercial and international users, at about $28,000 per kg.

AN EXAMPLE OF commercial research on the flight is a combustion module water mist fire-suppressant experiment sponsored by the Center for Commercial Applications of Combustion in Space at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden. That group, in connection with two companies, will study how small amounts of water mist interact with flames in 0g where no convection is occurring. That could provide physics data to improve how water mist in Earth-based systems could replace halon fire suppressants banned by environmental regulations-a fire suppression challenge expected to be worth $2 billion in the coming years.