Clarkson flag heading off to space station
POTSDAM — A flag from Clarkson University is headed to the International Space Station next week.
The green and gold flag will be on board the space shuttle Atlantis as it makes its final trip into space. It will be there in honor of a Clarkson University alumnus, who will direct the mission from Houston.
Michael L. Sarafin graduated from Clarkson in 1994 and has been working for NASA ever since. The mission, STS-132, will be the third flight he has directed.
A shuttle director is in charge of mission control and overseeing the safety of the shuttle and its crew from Houston.
"The last year we've spent planning the mission STS-132," Mr. Sarafin said. "Last week, I was at Kennedy Space Center, and while I was there I saw her sitting on the mat. We're just in our final prep stages."
The shuttle launch is scheduled for 2:20 p.m. Friday from Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
During the 12-day mission, the shuttle's six crew members will deliver a Russian research module, solar batteries and spare parts to the International Space Station. Three spacewalks are scheduled, according to the NASA website.
The mission is one of the final three for NASA's space shuttle program. Two flights are planned for shuttles Discovery and Endeavour later this year. After that, all three will be shipped off to various museums. Two private companies will take over servicing the station.
Mission control staff and the crew have spent the past few months rehearsing and planning for potential scenarios. Though Atlantis has been in service for 25 years and made 32 flights, no mission is exactly the same.
"I wouldn't say any of the missions are routine," Mr. Sarafin said. "We're taking a 110-ton spacecraft and throwing it up in the air at a target that's the size of three football fields — the International Space Station — and bringing the spacecraft home safe. It's never going to be routine."
Thousands of people will watch the launch, including a Clarkson professor of mechanical and aeronautical engineering, Kenneth D. Visser. He and his son, Scott J., a first-grader at Lawrence Avenue Elementary School, will have a view from the VIP section at the space center.
"I'm an aero fanatic and I'll be jumping up and down when this thing takes off like a little kid," said Mr. Visser, who worked for NASA before coming to Clarkson. "I've been waiting 40 years to see a launch."
The pair will be about three miles away from the launch pad. During the launch, 7 million pounds of thrust will spew from the shuttle's engines. The flames are two-thirds the heat of the sun and the shuttle accelerates from 0 to more than 17,000 mph in slightly more than eight minutes, according to NASA.
Mr. Visser was not one of Mr. Sarafin's professors; the two met a few years ago when the NASA flight director was invited to be a guest speaker at an aeronautics competition at Clarkson.
"I always like to have a cool guest speaker, so I was perusing the alumni archives and found that we have a flight director at NASA," said Mr. Visser, who advises the university's aeronautics club. "I called him up and asked him if he would be interested in coming up, and he said, 'Absolutely.'"
It likely will be one of the last chances to see a launch, with the future of NASA's manned space flights uncertain. American astronauts will continue to go to the space station, which the U.S. has spent more than $50 billion of the $100 billion price tag to build, but not on American missions. They instead will partner with Russian missions, Mr. Sarafin said.
"We're in the ninth inning," he said. "As far as other NASA projects, we've got lots of unmanned programs. But for human space flight, there's a little bit of a question mark there."
