“Copy, airlock egress before doffing,” Avery said.
“Garrett and Mullen, you copy?”
Garrett gave a thumbs-up.
“We copy, Houston,” Mullen said.
“Commander and pilot?”
“We copy.”
Having just been updated on the status of Columbia’s commander and pilot, Julie Pollard strolled through the Mission Control Center. Another disaster averted, she thought. She didn’t feel smug, but rather satisfied, needed, high. As she approached the flight director’s console and saw Allan Warner look up, she flashed him an energized smile.
“Nice plan, Julie, way to go.”
“You’re welcome, Allan. Just getting the work done through the people, you know,” she said with a wink.
“Yeah, I guess,” he said, clearly not getting her manager-to-manager joke. “Hey, you got a minute?”
“Sure. I was just on my way to find something to eat, I’m starved.”
“You can eat at a time like this?”
“A time like what, Allan?”
“I’m still very concerned about two things, Julie.”
“Oh really? What things?”
“Well, Atlantis’s tile damage for one. I’m worried that after all the heroics we’ve seen today…”
“You’re worried about reentry.”
“Correct.”
“Well, you don’t need to be. I think we’ll be fine. Think of all the tile damage we’ve seen post-flight. We didn’t worry about those flights because we didn’t know the damage was there. I don’t think the damage Atlantis has now is much worse than what we’ve seen in the past.”
“Well, I just hope we have enough luck left over for reentry.”
Pollard nodded.
“You don’t think Mullen used it all up flying around today?”
“No Allan, I think there’s still some luck left.”
“Good.”
“So what else?” Pollard asked.
Warner looked puzzled.
“You said you were worried about two things—what’s the other one?”
“What to do with Columbia after Atlantis comes home.”
“I thought you guys were going to do a remote de-orbit burn into the Pacific.”
“Right, we were. But that was before we blew her sidehatch and exposed her electronics to the extreme temperatures of space.”
Chapter 76
On Atlantis
Columbia Flight Day 27
Tuesday, Feb. 11, 2003
SPACE SHUTTLE ORBITERS had always been considered unique vehicles, not only because of their ability to perform both as a spacecraft and airplane, but also because of their versatility in performing specialized tasks in space. Despite the technical marvel of its design, however, the orbiter was never intended to transport 11 astronauts.
Now with 11 astronauts onboard, Atlantis felt crowded as a college-apartment party. The living quarters were a blur of orange as 11 astronauts finished donning their pumpkin-colored flight suits and took their assigned seats for reentry.
On the flight deck of Atlantis, the four astronauts of the rescue crew—Avery, Rivas, Garrett, and Mullen—busied themselves with line items from the landing-procedure cards. They had already begun loading the de-orbit burn targets into the guidance, navigation and flight-control software. The burn targets were the necessary variables used by the software. The variables included current altitude, the landing site—the Kennedy Space Center—and velocity/flight-path data. The software used those variables, taking into consideration Atlantis’s heat-shield thermal limits. This assured that Atlantis would not come in too fast or too steep, either of which would exceed her heat-shield’s ability to sufficiently dissipate heat on reentry.
Below on the mid-deck, the seven tested Columbia astronauts sat quietly, belted to makeshift semi-reclined seats. They had endured the contingency EVA from Columbia to Atlantis, and of course they had also endured nearly 30 very uncertain, interminable days in space. Their wretched mess of a mission was nearly over.
It was an unspoken moment of reflection and prayer for Columbia’s seven. A time for listening to radio calls between Houston and Atlantis. It was also the time when Columbia crew members began to long for home. To imagine how the first steaming-hot, high-pressure shower would feel, the taste of a grilled cheeseburger, and the pastel scent of fabric-softened, fresh bed linens. The innate comfort of gravity was just over an hour away.
Atlantis was coming home.
“Atlantis, Houston, you’re go for retrograde attitude, and switch to OPS three, when you’re ready.”
“We copy, go for retrograde and switch to OPS three.” (As part of the orbiter’s flight control software, OPS three specifically handled reentry and landing.)
Avery took hold of the rotational hand controller joystick to gain control of Atlantis’s reaction control system (RCS) jets. She made small, careful inputs, turning Atlantis around with short jet pulses until Atlantis’s nose was faced away from the direction of orbit. Atlantis’s orbiter maneuvering system (OMS) pods, those aft bulges visible above Atlantis’s main engine bells, now faced into the direction of flight.
Next, the astronauts on the flight deck readied the OMS engines for firing by performing data checks and thrust-vector gimbal tests.
“Atlantis, Houston, major mode three-oh-two.”
“Copy, major mode three-oh-two.”
Avery and Rivas made the necessary software inputs. Major mode 302 allowed the OMS engine burn to be executed. Entering this mode was similar to turning the firing key of a missile-launch system to “Arm.”
At the exact moment, the OMS engines lit without hesitation, burning for a duration of two minutes and 43 seconds. This was the amount of time Atlantis’s computers had determined was necessary to sufficiently slow the orbiter and cause her to fall from orbit at the right place and rate.
“Atlantis, Houston, major mode three-oh-three.”
“Houston, Atlantis, we copy, major mode three-oh-three. Deorbit maneuver coast.”
Entry Interface (EI), defined as the point where Earth’s atmosphere was first encountered by a spacecraft on reentry, occurred at an altitude of 400,000 feet, and was designated as EI+000 seconds. All events that occurred after EI were expressed as the number of seconds elapsed since the point of EI. An orbiter was said to have initiated the entry phase of flight when she was EI-plus-five minutes.
Atlantis was Earthbound, dialed in for a landing at the Kennedy Space Center. Nothing could be done now by the crew or Mission Control to stop Atlantis’s descent to Earth.
NASA Announcer: Atlantis currently at five-hundred-fifty-thousand feet in altitude, airspeed twenty-five-thousand-three-hundred feet per
