Orbit of Discovery: The All-Ohio Space Shuttle Mission

Chapter Twelve: Those Clang Jangin’ Woodpeckers

348 Chapter Twelve Those Clang Jangin’ Woodpeckers NASA’s space shuttle program, which began April 12, 1981, and ended July 21, 2011, will be remembered both for its great triumphs and even greater tragedies. The loss of seven astronauts aboard the space shuttle Challenger in 1986 and the loss of seven more aboard Columbia seventeen years later will forever be etched in the annals of spaceflight. So, too, will be the United States’ development of a fleet of reusable spacecraft—Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavour —that launched telescopes to give us exceptional views of faraway heavenly bodies and cosmic phenomenon, provided the opportunity for extensive microgravity scientific research in a myriad of disciplines, deployed satellites that explored our universe and beyond looking for the secrets to our existence, and facilitated the construction of a fully operational outpost that’s manned year round—the International Space Station. And then there was the human element—thousands upon thousands of people—from the astronauts who flew aboard the shuttles and the ground personnel at NASA centers and contractor employ- 349 Those Clang Jangin’ Woodpeckers ees who readied the missions, to the taxpayers who funded it all. We will never forget their commitment to space exploration. It is my hope that the legacy of STS-70 is a mix of the substantive and the whimsical. From the deployment of a Tracking and Data Relay Satellite that almostagenerationlatercontinuestoprovidevirtuallyinstantaneous communication between spacecraft and ground controllers to a cartoon character—Woody Woodpecker, to be precise—that embodied some of its pesky all-too-real brethren who pecked a hole—okay, over two hundred of them—in NASA’s plans to launch a group of astronauts—all but one—from the same Midwestern state, Ohio. But in many ways, as is often the case, the unusual overrides the normal, the humorous supersedes the serious in the collective memory. And so it probably will be for STS-70, the All-Ohio Space Shuttle Mission. ToddHalvorson,veteranspacereporterfortheFlorida Todaynewspaper which circulates in the Space Coast area that includes the Kennedy Space Center, decided that STS-70 experienced the weirdest launch delay in shuttle program history, “Set to launch on the historic one hundredth US human space flight, the mission was delayed after Yellow Shafted Flicker Woodpeckers drilled dozens of holes in external tank foam insulation. The shuttle was returned to its assembly building for repairs. The mission ultimately became the one hundred and first US human space flight,” he wrote in an article marking the program’s twenty-fifth anniversary. Another veteran space reporter, Irene Klotz, writing for the Discovery Channel, compiled a list of the “Top Ten Reasons for Shuttle Launch Delays.” While the attack of the woodpecker did not make the much coveted number one position, it did claim the number ten spot. In a similar Discovery Space website ranking for the best space wake-up music ever, Klotz ranked the Woody Woodpecker theme song played for STS-70 as number two of all time and ranked it the top wake-up music of the entire space shuttle program. 350 ORBIT OF DISCOVERY And Roger Balettie, a long-time Mission Control employee who worked as the lead Flight Dynamics Officer, wrote in his blog that the STS-70 woodpecker incident was one of his most humorous experiences working for NASA. He even posted on his website a picture of himself posing with the stuffed Woody Woodpecker in Mission Control taken during our flight. He recalled how Woody was adopted as an unofficial mascot for that mission and that flight controllers took turns having their picture taken with Woody. For many of the NASA workers at both the Kennedy Space Center and the Johnson Space Center who supported our mission, as well as those who worked on the TDRS we deployed, STS-70 will always be one of their more unusual missions. STS-70 clearly was as much fun for our ground team as it had been for all of us aboard Discovery —and it remains so to this day. Woody was added to an unofficial version of the official STS-70 crew patch. That version, designed by JSC employees Paula Vargas and Andrew Parris, featured Woody Woodpecker standing behind the space shuttle in our official patch with arms outstretched as if to say “Here I am, folks!” The STS-70 crew received a few of those special patches after we landed, so unfortunately none of them...