CHAPTER 4 DAY IN THE LIFE: THE MAKING OF A MISSION 62 50064 blk 50081 white 50070 red 50539 true royal 50194 china blue 50606 vibrant chicory 50445 cloud 50501Mango gold The STS-130/ISS-20A crew mission patch. Since the Cupola was a major new module, the perspective represented here is the view of Earth from inside the module. When all goes well, most space missions do not garner any real headlines or discussion in the media. This absence of coverage understates the amount of effort that goes into making a mission successful. All missions to the International Space Station (ISS) possess common characteristics. This chapter illustrates this process by telling the story of a “typical” ISS assembly mission. During assembly missions, Space Shuttles rendezvoused with the ISS, crews transferred hardware (often a completely new module), astronauts conducted multiple spacewalks (i.e., extravehicular activities [EVAs]), and NASA and its partners established new capabilities. A team of flight controllers, with Boeing engineering support, worked around the clock during each mission to ensure everything went as planned, and to intervene when it didn’t. The orbiter would return to Earth after about 2 weeks, leaving the increment crew behind to carry on while flight directors and controllers working with the ISS Program Office prepared for the next mission. Planning for such a mission began several years in advance. Initially, the program office detailed high-level objectives that drove the specifics of the mission. Approximately 1 year prior to launch, a group of controllers, led by a flight director whose full-time job was to prepare for the mission, detailed development of the mission timeline, wrote flight rules and procedures, and planned EVAs. A flight director and a team of controllers were each assigned for the two sides of a mission: Space Shuttle and ISS. These represented the prime teams for the mission. In addition, another team was assigned to the ISS increment (see the “Planning” section of this chapter) where the mission was scheduled to take place. The three flight directors worked closely together to ensure everything was integrated on both programs. Change was ever-present in the process of preparing for a mission as priorities and needs shifted such as when a major component on the ISS required repair. In fact, change was probably one of the most significant issues a flight director confronted in preparing for a mission. Needs and objectives changed constantly as a mission evolved: schedules might have slipped critical hardware could have broken, thus requiring immediate replacement or a failure on the space station may have driven a late change. Therefore, the teams had to continuously adapt. Attention to detail, in any plan, is critical. Careful planning and vigilance reduces the chance of surprises or failures. Even so, the flight director and the team spent many a sleepless night during the assembly missions wondering “What did we not think of? What could possibly go wrong?” Inevitably, things did go wrong. Frequently things went wrong that no one had ever considered. When this happened, the experience, training and preparation of the crew and the flight control team came together to resolve those problems as quickly and as safely as possible. Training was next. Once the timeline was developed in significant detail, flight control teams and crews simulated the mission’s critical activities. The Space Shuttle flight control team conducted a number of simulations with the shuttle crew, focusing primarily on launch and possible aborts. Likewise, the ISS flight control team assigned to the mission practiced activating the module or other key tasks. However, the increment crew members that would be present during an assembly mission were often scattered around the world, preparing for