Endeavour put on standby as rescue spacecraft

Space Shuttle Endeavour is on standby (in the background) in case something happens on Atlantis' mission to fix the Hubble telescope.

(Credit: NASA/Jack Pfaller )

It's not just a pretty picture. This NASA photo from Kennedy Space Center shows how, for the first time since July 2001, two shuttles are on launch pads at the same time. Atlantis is in the foreground on Launch Pad A, and Endeavour is behind it on Launch Pad B.

Endeavour was moved into position Friday so it could be on standby in the unlikely event that a rescue mission is necessary for the Atlantis' planned October 10 mission to repair NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, the agency said.

Once Endeavour is cleared from its rescue spacecraft duty, it's scheduled to move to Launch Pad A for planned November 12 mission to the International Space Station.

What makes the Hubble repair mission particularly dangerous is that if Atlantis gets seriously damaged during flight, the seven astronauts would be stranded--they couldn't just hang out at the International Space Station waiting for a ride.

Plus, as the Associated Press points out, Atlantis "faces an estimated 1-in-185 chance that a piece of space junk or a micrometeoroid will cause catastrophic damage to their ship." Those odds are greater than for a typical shuttle flight because of Hubble's unusually high and debris-filled orbit.

Insane.

[HlLLARY CLITON]

beautiful photo

[gigrigg]

I was in second grade the first time they launched a shuttle. I am 35 now, and this design is still being used... amazing. Nice photo!

[sythara]

Space Shuttle... A great consept and a spectacular waste of taxpayer money. After the program was put into production all records of previous rockets were destroyed, to include Saturn V which is the only vehicle that can get us to the moon. Now we have to reinvent the wheel and watse more tax dollars.

Shuttle should have been used as a special purpose vehicle and capsules used to day-to-day space ferry.


Makes for a great photo though.

[Seaspray0]

sythara, if you were going to design a new car, would you dredge up the plans for a model T to base them from? I would hope they don't design any new spacecraft based on the saturn V rockets (the model T). But... you could be right. Having those plans could have shown them atleast the basics.

[Seaspray0]

This would also mean that the hubble telescope will be facing those 1-185 chances of damage for the same number of days as this mission. So if you divide those odds by the number of days for this mission, then multiply it by the number of days the telescope has been in orbit.... hmmm...why hasn't it been obliterated yet? I know it's not exactly a direct relationship because we're comparing a telescope to a shuttle, but it still makes me question those odds. I think it's more that Nasa is affraid of creating more dead astronauts and are taking the human factor very seriously.