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Sorry for not providing a link to the document giving the procedure for automated shuttle contingency operation. IIRC, there was no plan to de-orbit and land th

Sorry for not providing a link to the document giving the procedure for automated shuttle contingency operation. IIRC, there was no plan to de-orbit and land the orbiter. The plan was to ease it away from ISS, open the cargo bay doors, execute the de-orbit burn, and orient the vehicle to break up and burn as completely as possible. Of course, the digital autopilot was capable of performing an automated landing. It was always done manually, ostensibly to maintain pilot proficiency and minimize the reaction time should the autopilot misbehave.

skissane 5y ago
> Sorry for not providing a link to the document giving the procedure for automated shuttle contingency operation. IIRC, there was no plan to de-orbit and land the orbiter. The plan was to ease it away from ISS, open the cargo bay doors, execute the de-orbit burn, and orient the vehicle to break up and burn as completely as possible. That's not true. They implemented "Remote Control Orbiter" (RCO) capability which was based on a special "In-Flight Maintenance (IFM) cable". See this NASA presentation for some details: https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20070019347/downloads/20070019347.pdf https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20070019347/downloads/20... The plan to intentionally trigger the orbiter to break-up on re-entry was really only for STS-114 – that was the first post-Columbia mission, but RCO and IFM cable weren't available yet. From the next mission, STS-121 onwards, the IFM cable was stored on-board the ISS, so the plan was to use RCO to re-enter and land under remote control. (I'm not sure what the plan was for STS-125, which I believe is the only post-Columbia non-ISS mission – they couldn't use the IFM on the ISS since it wasn't reachable from their orbit; I don't know if NASA had a second IFM cable to use for it.)

skissane 5y ago

> Sorry for not providing a link to the document giving the procedure for automated shuttle contingency operation. IIRC, there was no plan to de-orbit and land the orbiter. The plan was to ease it away from ISS, open the cargo bay doors, execute the de-orbit burn, and orient the vehicle to break up and burn as completely as possible. That's not true. They implemented "Remote Control Orbiter" (RCO) capability which was based on a special "In-Flight Maintenance (IFM) cable". See this NASA presentation for some details: https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20070019347/downloads/20070019347.pdf https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20070019347/downloads/20... The plan to intentionally trigger the orbiter to break-up on re-entry was really only for STS-114 – that was the first post-Columbia mission, but RCO and IFM cable weren't available yet. From the next mission, STS-121 onwards, the IFM cable was stored on-board the ISS, so the plan was to use RCO to re-enter and land under remote control. (I'm not sure what the plan was for STS-125, which I believe is the only post-Columbia non-ISS mission – they couldn't use the IFM on the ISS since it wasn't reachable from their orbit; I don't know if NASA had a second IFM cable to use for it.)