Minutes for Wednesday, January 10 EVA AIT Splinter – Pump Module Assembly (PM-A) Installation EVA Acceptance Test

Members of the EVA AIT met at the Johnson Space Center on Wednesday, January 10 in a splinter session to discuss issues with the Pump Module Assembly installation EVA acceptance test. The following people attended, either in person or by telecon: DX32/Chris Looper, CB/Dave Wolf, XA/Nancy Patrick (at JSC), Boeing/Lou Ramon (at Boeing-Houston), PG1/Sandra McKee and Dan Pankratz (at B-BHB), CA/Kevin Flautt, Chris Hardcastle and CB/Jerry Ross (at KSC). PG1 had requested closure of the acceptance test since the PM-A was successfully installed on S1. SVITO wanted to maintain open paperwork because, from their assessment, the PM-A MLI could and would interfere with the guide rails on structure. There was no presentation material. Contact Ms. Patrick at 281-244-1075 with any questions or concerns.

Mssrs Flautt, Hardcastle and Ross began the discussion with a description of the issue. They explained that during the testing performed, the SVITO representative observed that the PM-A blanket could catch on the ORU guide rails during installation, and that a technician had to hold the blanket down so that it wouldn’t. PG1/Dan Pankratz agreed that it may be possible to catch the blanket during installation, however he didn’t recall a technician holding the blanket so that it wouldn’t during the test. All agreed that the situation was similar with the Nitrogen Tank Assembly (NTA) when it was installed on S1. Some video and photographs were taken of both installation activities, but no one present knew whether they clearly show the issue. At this point, Huntington Beach management has not yet been convinced that there is a real interference that needs to be fixed. Therefore, they requested additional work to confirm that the interference is unequivocal. PG1 will address the issue in an IRB (Internal Review Board?) for a final decision on the action they are willing to take. There are two crew squawks open – one on the S1 NTA and one on the S1 PM-A.

Huntington Beach addressed the upcoming hardware activities that could provide additional opportunities to evaluate this issue, and the schedule drivers for addressing it. The S1 PM-A was removed in December and won’t be re-installed until later this year. The P1 PM-A is scheduled to be installed January 27th and the P1 NTA is scheduled to be installed the first week of February. All agreed that those installations should be witnessed, concentrating on the blankets for evidence of the interference. They did not know whether this is the final installation of the P1 ORUs. The S1 NTA is not scheduled to be removed, and therefore if the blanket has to be fixed, it will have to be fixed in place to avoid a schedule impact to S1.

The group agreed to the following course of action to close this issue: