Source: Florida Today
NASA has flip-flopped the final two shuttle missions, with Endeavour now expected to fly last, a 12-day flight that could bring the program to an end during the holiday season.
Targeted for sometime in November, Endeavour’s mission leapfrogged Discovery’s planned September launch after scientists decided to modify a science instrument that had been scheduled to fly to the International Space Station this summer.
Delivery of the $1.5 billion Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer to Kennedy Space Center is now expected by late August to support a flight by mid-November.
“The decision ultimately was to give AMS as much time as possible, to make sure that that spectrometer is in good shape,” said Kyle Herring, a NASA spokesman at Johnson Space Center
in Houston.
United Space Alliance, NASA’s prime shuttle fleet operator, said the revised launch dates could change the timing and size of layoffs that had been expected to impact thousands of employees around October.
“That layoff will still take place, even with the slip of the final mission’s launch date, but the timing and the size of the initial layoff might be adjusted to accommodate the change in the manifest,” said Tracy Yates, a company spokeswoman. “The workforce planning process is in the works and will not be finalized until this summer.”
It won’t be easy to fly a shuttle mission late this year or early next year.
Most of November is covered by a period when the sun’s angle would not allow a shuttle to stay docked at the station for a full mission. A similar “cutout” exists in the first few weeks of January.
And traffic to and from the orbiting science complex is busy this fall.
A Russian Soyuz spacecraft carrying a crew of three is due to depart the outpost right after Thanksgiving. An unmanned European freighter is targeted to launch a resupply mission a short time later.
Another Soyuz plans to ferry up a replacement crew Dec. 10, followed by a Russian cargo ship later in December and a Japanese cargo spacecraft in late January.
To read more: http://www.floridatoday.com/article/20100427/NEWS02/4270319/Endeavour+now+set+to+be+final+mission