Space veterans on the crew of as-tronauts scheduled to return NASA's shuttle fleet to service next month expect their STS-114 mission to be one of the safest ever flown, given the extensive technical and organizational analysis that followed the Columbia accident more than two years ago. More troublesome to crewmembers like Andy Thomas, who has a wide range of experience from his three trips to space, is the heavy on-orbit workload that will start before the crew gets its space legs. Thomas, the mission specialist in charge of inspecting the shuttle Discovery after ascent to ensure it suffered none of the thermal protection system (TPS) damage that doomed Columbia, must get out of his seat as soon as the main engines shut down to photograph the big external tank as it is jettisoned.
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