NASA, Edwards practice for future shuttle landings

  • Published
  • By Airman 1st Class Julius Delos Reyes
  • 95th Air Base Wing Public Affairs
EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. --  NASA and Edwards are geared up and prepared for future shuttle landings as they finished a successful space shuttle exercise here Saturday. 

With Edwards as the secondary landing site for space shuttle landings, more than 150 Edwards personnel and another 150 people from NASA, Fort Irwin, Calif., Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., Kennedy Space Center, Fla. and the Human Space Flight Support Office participated in the exercise. 

The base is required by the Human Space Flight Support Office to conduct two exercises a year to make sure Edwards' capabilities to support space shuttle landings still meet NASA's standards, said Lt. Col. Christopher Wheeler, 412th Operations Support Squadron commander and one of the incident commanders for the shuttle landing exercise. 

"The exercise is about practice and staying current on space shuttle recovery operations, normal procedures and emergency procedures that we don't use often," said Brig. Gen. Jim Hogue, mobilization assistant to the Air Force Flight Test Center commander and the director of the Edwards Space Shuttle Contingency Recovery Team. "The exercise is the culminating event after a week's worth of annual training given to Edwards' personnel by NASA and the Human Space Flight Support Office." 

There is a need to perform shuttle landing exercises because the space shuttle is a very unique aircraft with some very special handling requirements and hazardous chemicals on board, the general said. 

During the exercise, these needs were supported by different base organizations including the 412th OSS, 95th Medical Group, 95th Civil Engineer and Transportation Directorate, 95th Security Forces Squadron and the 95th Communications Group. 

"Just about every organization on base was involved," General Hogue said. 

For the operational support side, the 412th OSS managed the airfield and air traffic control. They also cleared the air space for the shuttle exercise. 

The fire department provided rescue and firefighting support as needed for the orbiter landings, said Monte Congleton, assistant fire chief for the Edwards fire department.

The medical component of the response team was composed of medics from the flight surgeon's office and 95th Medical Operations Squadron, reserve forces from March Air Reserve Base, Calif., personnel from Naval Medical Center San Diego and Fort Irwin. 

"We created a triage zone to receive casualties after decontamination," said Col. Lois MacDonald, Space Shuttle Contingency Response team medical director. 

The medical component practiced performing initial assessment for medical stabilization and evacuated the astronauts by Army helicopters to definitive medical care. 

The contingent from the Army's National Training Center at Fort Irwin also supported the exercise by providing five UH-60 "Blackhawk" helicopters. The Army was also able to test the capability of their new aircraft, the UH-72A "Lakota," to provide support for the shuttle contingencies through air-evacuations. 

Key to Edwards' support during the exercise was the disaster and preparedness team, Colonel Wheeler said. They were the central communications node for Edwards support. 

Meanwhile, the 95th Aerospace Medical Squadron provided bioenvironmental engineers to make sure chemicals or gases released from the shuttle were not present, Colonel Wheeler said. They also have the flight medicine and crash and rescue, which were responsible for the treatment of the astronauts. 

The 95th Security Forces Squadron provided security and protection measures. On the other hand, the 95th Communications Squadron ensured all the communications were up and running. Other organizations included the 95th Air Base Wing command post, AFFTC Public Affairs, AFFTC Flight Safety and the Civil Air Patrol. 

"We performed two scenarios to evaluate our ability to extract crew members under different types of situations," Colonel Wheeler said. 

The shuttle landing response team performs different responses in accordance to various scenarios, Mr. Congleton said. Mode V is an unaided egress and aided escape; Mode VI is aided egress and aided escape; Mode VII is off runway, aided egress and aided escape; and Mode VIII is bailout. 

During the exercise, NASA and the Edwards team performed Modes V and VI. 

"In Mode V, the astronauts are able to get out of the orbiter by themselves but require assistance getting away from the aircraft to a safe location," Mr. Congleton said. 

The fire department helped the crew go through the decontamination line, checked by the bioenvironmental engineers and then handed over to the medics, he said. 

For Mode VI, the fire department gained entry into the orbiter, performed shut down procedures, extracted the astronauts and had them move through the decontamination line, he said. Each astronaut was then transferred over to the medics within 10 minutes. 

"The exercise went very well," Colonel Wheeler said. "NASA and Edwards have a really close working relationship. They have done this a long time here both real world and exercises. The procedures are pretty well established about who does what and what do they need to do. It is pretty well-run operation." 

General Hogue said with the exercise, the team learned some new things, improved some processes and cleared up gray areas. 

"We did it all safely," he said. "Everyone involved came away with a new feeling of confidence that Edwards is ready to support STS-117 should it land here." 

Space Shuttle Atlantis, which will perform the STS-117 mission to the International Space Station, is scheduled to lift off in June.