Shuttles, Turning Sedentary, Leave Pieces Behind for Science and Safety

As the agency gets its space shuttles ready to be shipped out to museums, it will not be sending them off lock, stock and barrel. The crews doing the prep work have been flooded with requests to squirrel away parts of the spacecraft for analysis. Valves, flight-control instruments, even the tires and windows — little is safe from the clutches of NASA engineers.

“I’ve got a list of hundreds of items that have to come off the ship,” said Stephanie S. Stilson, who is directing the preparation of the shuttle Discovery for delivery to the Smithsonian Institution next year in what NASA calls its “transition and retirement” program.

In April, NASA named the permanent old-age homes for its shuttles, which have been escorting astronauts to space for 30 years. The Endeavour, which completed its last mission early Wednesday with a pinpoint landing after 16 days in orbit, will bask in glory only briefly before it is groomed for delivery to the California Science Center in Los Angeles. The Atlantis, which will make its final flight next month, is destined to live at the visitors’ center here at the space center.

The Discovery made its last flight in March and now sits in a maintenance bay, enclosed by platforms that would normally be crawling with workers inspecting and maintaining its many systems — including the thousands of thermal tiles that cover its skin — to be ready for its next liftoff. These days, as the shuttle program winds down and the staff has been winnowed by layoffs, technicians work on the Discovery only when there are no more pressing tasks. And rather than sprucing it up for another trip to space, likely as not they are taking something out of it.

“We in engineering, we want to hold on to things that we could potentially use, or we want to study them, which is a smart thing to do,” Ms. Stilson said. The shuttles are the only spacecraft that have been launched into orbit multiple times — the Discovery is the most-traveled, with 39 missions — and a better understanding of how the materials and equipment have fared could help future aerospace designers.

Ms. Stilson spoke near one of the Discovery’s main landing gears, where the tires used on the last flight had been removed in favor of what NASA calls “roll-around tires” — basically a bunch of old spares. On a higher platform, workers were putting the finishing touches on replacement windows for the spacecraft, the originals having been taken out so engineers could study what effect the microdebris encountered in so many trips in space had on the glass.

While those who are to receive the shuttles say they understand the need for research, they are a little surprised by how much will be missing.

“We’re considered to be the nation’s official repository of our past,” said Valerie Neal, curator for contemporary human spaceflight at the Smithsonian, which will display the Discovery at the National Air and Space Museum’s annex near Dulles Airport. “Our point of view would be to receive an orbiter in as intact a state as possible.”

Ms. Neal said that when she first started discussing the fate of the shuttle with NASA several years ago, “I rather na?vely thought it would be intact.”

Some of the removal work is dictated by safety concerns. There are small explosive charges all around the shuttle, including one designed to blow a latch and deploy the front landing gear should the normal systems fail. Although the firing mechanism has been disabled, “We don’t want to take a chance that if it’s sitting in the Smithsonian it could somehow detonate,” Ms. Stilson said.

The thrusters near the shuttle’s nose and the podlike maneuvering engines in the rear both contain propellants that are highly toxic and corrosive, even in tiny amounts. So these components have been removed and sent to a special facility where workers in hazardous materials suits will “cut and gut” them, removing much of the insides before shipping them back. “We’ll reinstall them, and from the outside they’ll look exactly the same,” Ms. Stilson said.

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At War: What They Left Behind in Libya

。 Bryan Denton for The New York TimesClothing left behind by migrant workers who fled Misurata, Libya. Hundreds of families have camped out near the port there in the hope of leaving the war-torn country. More photos ?

MISURATA, Libya — The family photo albums, abandoned on the sand, lay open and fluttering in the desert wind. Around them were the personal items with which they had been packed: heaps of clothing, sandals, DVDs, combs, bottles of perfume, cooking utensils, razors, toothbrushes, several teapots, bundled blankets and a few biscuits, broken and dry. Every several yards a dropped suitcase rested on the dirt, looted bare.

War can strip those caught in its path to almost nothing, which is what happened to the people who had gathered here last Wednesday. They were African migrants caught in the conflict in Libya. They had long ago winnowed their meager possessions down, first to leave their small flats to move into tents, then to leave the tents to stand in line with a suitcase or two at this plot of bare desert, where they were told to wait for a ride to a ship. Here they stood until they ran. They dashed away so quickly and with such panic that they left behind the last things to which they had clung.

Like more than 10,000 other migrant workers in Misurata, they had been idled from work by the outbreak of war, and then cut off from routes overland toward home when the military of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi put this city under siege. They had waited two months for an evacuation vessel to arrive in the city’s harbor and carry them out.

A story published Friday in The New York Times described some of the awful events that afternoon as many migrants, just before they were to leave on the ship, came under Grad rocket fire from the Qaddafi forces. Several of those rockets struck in and around a camp set up for the workers by the Libyan Red Crescent and other aid groups.

Bryan Denton for The New York TimesA photo of a young child was among the personal items left in Misurata by fleeing migrants.

The rockets landed shortly after many migrants had lined up along a desert road near the port to wait for the buses and trucks that were to move them to the ship. These migrants were in line completely in the open, on ground with no place to hide or to seek shelter when the ordnance came down. None of the munitions landed exactly this spot. But several Grad rockets landed close enough to put a deep scare into the crowd, and to the aid workers who were helping them.

When their transportation came for them, there was neither time nor room to bring most of the luggage. The crowd piled onto the trucks. The luggage remained behind. The workers were rushed to the boat, which hastily departed for Benghazi, the rebel capital, about a 20-hour steam to the east, across the Gulf of Sirte.

Bryan Denton for The New York TimesA picture of an African woman lies amid clothing and other personal items abandoned earlier in the week by fleeing migrant workers.

For a day or two, some of the at least several hundred migrant workers who have thus far missed every evacuation vessel wandered this patch of windswept ground, picking through what had been left. They could be seen holding up clothes, doing quick fittings to see if the possessions of those who departed were worth claiming. Feral dogs wandered, too. They took care of most of the food.

Now the weather is doing its work, scattering what is left, including the photo albums, which many of the workers had made certain to hold on to, almost to the end, when they arrived at the ship with only the clothes they wore.

Follow C.J. Chivers on Facebook, on Twitter at @cjchivers or on his personal blog, cjchivers.com, where many posts from At War are supplemented with more photographs and further information.