HispanicBusiness

John "Danny" Olivas, one of NASA's eight Hispanic astronauts, is expected back on Earth on Friday after contributing to the repair of an essential component of the Atlantis space shuttle.

As lead for the shuttle's Special Purpose Dexterous Manipulator Robot, Mobile Transporter and the Mobile Base System, he was responsible for repairing the insulating blanket on the outside of the spacecraft, which had blown back during launch. The blanket protects the back end of the spacecraft from temperatures of up to 1,000 degrees experienced during the shuttle's re-entry into Earth atmosphere.

Shortly after Atlantis docked at the International Space Station on June 10, all six computers at the station crashed. The computers control the oxygen generator, temperature, and a carbon dioxide scrubber, all essential for human survival in space.

After Russian astronauts fixed the computers by isolating a switch that appeared to be responsible for the malfunctions, two American astronauts – Mr. Olivas and James F. Reilly II – conducted a space walk to fix the blanket.

Mr. Olivas repaired the heat blanket that folded during the launch by using 21 stainless steel pins to connect the blanket to thermal tiles. Mr. Reilly replaced a water-discharge vent with a hydrogen vent as part of the station's new oxygen generation system.


Because of the malfunctions the International Space Station experienced, the 11-day Atlantis mission was turned into a 13-day mission. During the Atlantis' stay at the space station, astronauts conducted four space walks, installing a new truss segment, unfurling a pair of power-generating solar arrays, repairing the thermal blanket, and activating a rotating joint that enables the solar arrays to track the sun.

The Atlantis crew was slated to return Thursday, but thunderstorms near Kenedey Space Center in Florida forced the space shuttle to skip its two landing opportunities. The crew will try landing again Friday.

Twelve more construction missions are expected in the future to meet the 2010 deadline to finish building the International Space Station.

The Atlantis mission is Mr. Olivas' first space flight.

Interviewed from the shuttle by his hometown TV station, El Paso, Texas' KFOX, Mr. Olivas found the experience almost left him speechless.

"Words don't do it justice," he told KFOX. "There's just a tremendous feel of the vehicle as you're making an ascent and once you get into orbit, the feeling is just phenomenal and we've been enjoying it since we got here so it's ... words are hard to describe."

NASA chose Mr. Olivas, who holds a Ph.D. from Rice University, as an astronaut candidate in 1998. Before becoming an astronaut, he worked as a senior research engineer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) where he worked in the development of tools and methodologies for nondestructively evaluating microelectronics and structural materials subjected to space. He was also the program manager of JPL's Advanced Interconnect and Manufacturing Assurance Program where he evaluated the reliability of microelectronics for future NASA projects.

As a longtime worker in the mechanical engineering field, Mr. Olivas has won four NASA Class One Tech Brief Awards; five JPL-California Institute of Technology Novel Technology Recognitions; and received the McDonald's Hispanos Triunfadores Award, the NASA ASEE Summer Faculty Fellowship Award, and the Dow Life Saving Award. He also holds six U.S. patents.

The city of Las Cruces, N.M., is planning a welcome reception for Mr. Olivas after Atlantis lands in Cape Canaveral, Fla., on Thursday.