STS-27

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Mission emblem
Mission emblem STS-27
Mission dates
Mission: STS-27
COSPAR-ID : 1988-106A
Crew: 5
Begin: December 2, 1988, 14:30:34  UTC
Starting place: Kennedy Space Center , LC-39B
Landing: December 6, 1988, 23:36:11 UTC
Landing place: Edwards Air Force Base , Runway 17
Flight duration: 4d 9h 05m 37s
Earth orbits: 68
Track height: 447 km
Orbit inclination : 57.0 °
Covered track: 2.9 million km
Payload: Lacrosse 1
Team photo
v. l. No. Guy Gardner, William Shepherd, Robert Gibson, Richard Mullane, Jerry Ross
v. l. No. Guy Gardner, William Shepherd, Robert Gibson, Richard Mullane, Jerry Ross
◄ Before / After ►
STS-26 STS-29

STS-27 ( english S pace T ransportation S ystem ) is a mission designation for the US Space Shuttle Atlantis (OV-104) of NASA . The launch took place on December 2, 1988. It was the 27th space shuttle mission and the third flight of the space shuttle Atlantis.

team

Mission overview

The original start date from the previous day could not be met due to the weather conditions.

STS-27 was the third flight commissioned by the US Department of Defense. The mandate and achievement of objectives were subject to confidentiality. It is now known that the military reconnaissance satellite Lacrosse 1 was suspended during the mission .

The landing took place on December 6th at Edwards Air Force Base in California . The space shuttle Atlantis was transported back to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida seven days later by a special aircraft.

Almost disaster

Graphic representation of the damage to the heat shield

As it turned out after the landing, this shuttle mission almost came to a catastrophe, similar to the Columbia disaster 15 years later. 85 seconds after the start, a piece of insulation had come off the tip of the right solids booster and hit the heat shield of the shuttle. The Mission Control Center (MCC) therefore instructed the astronauts before landing to check the shield using a camera on the shuttle's robot arm . They discovered serious damage to many tiles, one tile was completely missing. The MCC asked the crew to send pictures of the tiles, but this was only allowed in encrypted form due to the confidentiality of the mission, which meant that only low data rates and image quality were possible. After brief analyzes in the MCC, the white spots on the images were therefore misinterpreted as shadows and lights and the worried astronauts were informed that the damage was within the normal range and that there was no danger. Although they were baffled by this assessment, they nevertheless obeyed the MCC and dared to land.

Molten metal in the place of the missing tile

When inspecting the shuttle after landing, it became apparent that around 700 tiles were damaged and one was completely missing. The catastrophe was probably only prevented by the fortunate fact that there was a thicker metal plate at the exact spot under the missing tile, which served as an anchor for an antenna. The heat shield showed the most serious damage that has been detected to date on a space shuttle that has returned safely to Earth.

Since this mission was the second space shuttle flight since the Challenger disaster , another calamity would very likely have meant the end of the space shuttle program. From today's perspective, the cause of the incident is both the confidentiality of the mission, which allowed the MCC to analyze only bad images, and the poor communication style of the MCC, which did not communicate the assumptions on which the conclusion that it was only insignificant was based Damage.

See also

Web links

Commons : STS-27  - album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ William Harwood: Legendary commander tells story of shuttle's close call . In: Spaceflight Now . Published March 27, 2009 (Retrieved March 28, 2009)
  2. ↑ STS-27 in Encyclopedia Astronautica, accessed February 12, 2019.