STS-119/125 delayed — What will it mean?

This post was written by on February 22, 2009
This post has 2 comments so far (is that a lot?) Comments(s)

STS-119′s mission to the ISS and STS-125′s mission to Hubble are both delayed.  With the upcoming retirement of the space shuttle in 2010 what does this mean?  Will we be forced to extend the shuttle to 2011, 2012 and beyond?  Would we extend it anyhow?

Space Shuttle launch delays are nothing new, but we’re coming to the end of the shuttle era and getting ready to move on to Constellation.  2009 alone is supposed to see 6 Space Shuttle flights, two of which should have already gone up but have not (STS-119and STS-125).  This year we’re slated to launch: STS-119, STS-125, STS-127, STS-128, STS-129 and STS-130.  Then in the final year of the Shuttle program we are to launch STS-131, STS-132 and STS-133.  That’s a pretty full schedule for 2009, although it looks like we have a bit of room in 2010.

The bigger issue here is STS-125.  With the other Space Shuttle missions the crew can use the International Space Station as a safe haven should something cripple their vessel.  With STS-125 servicing the Hubble, it is too far away to utilize the ISS so NASA needs to keep a secondary shuttle prepped on the other pad (39B)  in case of an emergency.  This may cause a bit of a problem as NASA is planning on tearing down pad 39B but they can’t do that until STS-125 safely lands.

So what do you think?  What impact will the delay of STS-119 and STS-125 have?  Heck, do you think STS-125 will even launch at this point?  I believe it has been cancelled once already and with the problems they are having with Hubble maybe they just sit this one out.  Send in your comments as this is the topic of Spacevidcast 2.07 this Thursday — The Space Shuttle Retirement.

  1. Harry says:
    February 24, 2009 at 5:40 pm

    1. I believe 125 will go off the ground this year and if not for repairing purposes, it will at least be about a save deorbit or retreavement.
    2. I really hope that NASA meets its Shuttle-Deadline, even in case there is an extention-bill in law by that time. It would show, that NASA can meet deadlines.
    3. I’m pro extention. It woult birng the chances to get sientific hardware there, wich can’t be launched otherwise. They could even bring up CAM, although I doubt they would try to do so as CAM has been outdoors at japans TCS for some time.

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  2. Rick Boozer says:
    February 27, 2009 at 8:37 pm

    “…with the problems they are having with Hubble maybe they just sit this one out.”

    The problems the Hubble is having were most of the reason for the service mission to begin with, so why are they a reason to cancel? No small part of the mission was to refurbish enough of the Hubble’s systems to give it a new lease on life and continue to astound us with amazing images for many years to come. Yes, there are some upgrades they plan to do, but they are add-ons to the original purpose. Remember a comment I posted after one of you preceding shows where I noted that the James Webb telescope is an infrared telescope and will not function in visible light at all! If we let Hubble die, there will be no large visual light telescope in space. We will be making ourselves partially blind in the astronomical sense in that we will have space observations from every part of the electromagnetic spectrum (from gammas rays to radio) except in for visual light!

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