Tuesday Space News
Poster: Aron Schatz
Posted on May 2, 2006 at 1:36:17 PM
NASA plans partial shuttle fix for thrusters.
Pluto probe to start testing instruments.
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Only one of four electronics boxes that could fail on Discovery and destroy the docked orbiter and the International Space Station will be replaced before the shuttle flies to the outpost in July, officials said Wednesday. The other three won't be fixed until after the mission because NASA has no additional spares and the chance of catastrophe is extremely remote - somewhere between 1 in 10,000 and 1 in one million.
Pluto probe to start testing instruments.
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The instrument checks have also gone according to plan. The Ralph instrument, which will map the surface composition of Pluto, and REX, a radio science experiment, both performed flawlessly in their initial functional checks. The SWAP solar wind detector has also successfully turned on its detectors, Stern says. Three instruments will open their detector doors for the first time in May - Ralph, the Pluto Energetic Particle Spectrometer Investigation and Alice, an ultraviolet imaging spectrometer. This will enable the instruments to take "first light" measurements, although Ralph's door has a window, meaning initial calibrations can be done earlier.