Space Forum / Shuttle / November 2004

Inside the Wing

11.10.04

Returning the Space Shuttle to flight is so important to Lisa Campbell,
she's willing to spend 10 hours a day crawling around on her hands and knees
to help make it happen.

Campbell is an aerospace technician with United Space Alliance at NASA's
Kennedy Space Center in Florida. These days, she spends most of her time in
a crawlspace deep inside the left wing of Space Shuttle Discovery,
installing temperature sensors within the wing's leading edge.

The sensors are part of the Wing Leading Edge Impact Detection System, a new
safety measure added for all future Space Shuttle missions. The system also
includes accelerometers that monitor the orbiter's wings for debris impacts
during launch and while in orbit. Sensor data will flow from the wing to the
crew compartment, where it will be transmitted to Earth. Campbell leads the
team installing the sensors on Discovery's left wing.

There are 22 temperature sensors and 66 accelerometers on each wing. Rather
than wire and install each sensor one at a time, the work is being done in
three phases. Technicians already have completed the first step, which
involves bonding nuts to the wing at specific attach points. Now the crew is
completing the second process, routing wires to each of these locations from
relay boxes located on the sidewall of the main landing gear and the wing
glove, the forward portion of the wing. Finally, they will attach the wiring
to each sensor and fasten it to a nut already in place.

Campbell's job requires her to crawl through three different open sections,
called cavities, to reach the wing's edge. She squeezes through small
openings -- about the size of a clothes dryer door -- that provide access
from one cavity to the next.

"There's a big cavity to start with, and then you go through a little hole
and there's another cavity, and another hole and another cavity," Campbell
explains. "It gets smaller and smaller as you go farther back. And there's a
place all the way out to the end where, because there are two braces and a
wall, you have to just reach through with your hands."

If that sounds hard enough, bear in mind that she has to carry a light
source and any necessary tools along with her while maneuvering around
structural parts of the orbiter's airframe.

"The first week -- actually, the first two or three days I was in here doing
the wiring -- I couldn't walk," she admits. "My legs hurt so bad, I could
hardly stand up. At the end of the day, when I walked up the steps, they
just felt like jelly. But I found some new tools to make it a little easier,
like a little, teeny stool I can use in certain areas."

Campbell enjoys the work despite the occasional discomfort.

"We were in the wing the other day, and just from the angle, you could look
along the belly of the bird, and that was just so neat," she recalls,
shortly before venturing into the darkness of the wing again. "It was really
neat to stand there and look at it from a different perspective."

Anna Heiney
NASA's John F. Kennedy Space Center

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Jacques :-)

www.spacepatches.info