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Former NASA Space Shuttle Flight Director Tells of Solar Flare Scare

Mitch Battros - Earth Changes Media

Wayne Hale is the former NASA space shuttle flight director. In a recent article, Hale tells of some very intense moments regarding the space shuttle and solar flares. This story is being released for the first time and ECM is bringing this very telling news to you.

On December 12th 2006 astronauts aboard the International Space Station and space shuttle 'Discovery' took shelter in protected areas of their respective spacecraft overnight to avoid the effects of an X-3 solar flare which had just exploded. Maybe NASA wants to remind us of what could be coming in the months and few years ahead regarding Cycle 24.

I am posting Wayne Hale's log entry in its entirety. Trust me, this is one nail biting event. And I fully expect to see more like this beginning next year as a result of Cycle 24 and its prediction to be as much as 50% stronger than Cycle 23.

Wayne Hale's Log:

The Space Radiation Analysis Group (SRAG), have 'technical methods' of monitoring space weather that we don't talk about. Anyway, they called and said there had been a Solar 'event'. I love it when we use euphemisms. I had been briefed on solar 'events' and when SRAG reported that on the Flight Loop, I almost came out of my chair. It was, as I clearly recall, December 12th 2006 about 2 AM in Houston. All the really scary things in human space flight seem to happen at 2 AM.

SRAG said they were coming down to see me in person. This is really bad. That means they didn't want to talk about it on the Flight Loop because too many people around the world can monitor the conversations on the Flight Loop. This is bad. I spent a nervous 10 minutes chewing my fingernails as they made their way into the Flight Control Room (FCR). In hushed tones they described the problem: A major solar eruption that was sending electromagnetic radiation and highly charged particles toward the Earth has just erupted.

Early analysis said this would exceed the shuttle crew health limits when it got to us. They advised taking no action now, they needed to do more analysis, and would be back with an update in an hour or so. Then they left the FCR. Quietly. And I was left alone with my thoughts. I pulled out the flight rules and read over the ones dealing with space radiation.

The numbers SRAG predicted called for an emergency de-orbit to protect the crew. This was no drill. I got on the phone and called my boss. When you are chief of the Flight Director Office, you expect to get some number of calls at 2:30 in the morning.

Lee told me to take a deep breath and call me when they came back with their analysis in an hour. It was a long hour. Waiting.

It turned into an hour and a half. Two hours. I couldn't stand it any more and broadcasted blind on the Flight Loop: "SRAG, this is FLIGHT, please come to the FCR". Their response: "Be there an a few minutes, Flight Control" came the disembodied reply.

Fifteen long minutes later the door popped open and the SRAG guys (they always traveled in a group) came in. In hushed tones they explained that their initial estimate had been high. More observations indicated the radiation would be lower. By this time I had memorized the radiation limit table in the Flight Rules. Now we were at the level where the flight could continue only if there were high priority mission objectives to accomplish. We were past that. But it was no longer an emergency de-orbit question, maybe a de-orbit the next day at the opportunity for the primary landing site.

Ahh. The Orbit 1 Flight Director could make that call, and scramble the Entry team if required. Should I tell the crew? "Don't worry them Flight, we'll know more in a few hours". After they left, I called my boss back and the Orbit 1 Flight Director (a couple of hours before his normal wake up time) and told them we might be looking at mission termination when the day shift came in.

It seemed like just a few minutes later when the Orbit 1 Flight Director showed up in the FCR, fully awake and dressed. He wasn't going to let the rookie Flight Director end his mission early! He listened to my briefing, told me I didn't know jack . . . and flew out of the FCR to the locked SRAG room and beat on the door until they let him in.

I left shift not knowing if the shuttle was going to de-orbit in eight hours or not. I crashed at home after the long sleepless night. Hours later I woke up and called the MCC. No de-orbit today.

On my shift the next evening, the SRAG guys had a new and lower prediction: normal mission duration would be the plan. They would have some "words for the crew" on their return. What a wild night it had been.

After the crew landed, the doc's met them and explained that they had probably received the biggest dose of radiation ever received by a space crew. The Commander and his guys were NOT HAPPY. You never want your Commander to be NOT HAPPY.

Before the Crew debriefed with the Flight Directors, the results from the onboard dosimeters were available. Nowadays those results are on telemetry and available in "real time" during the mission. But in the early days, they were only readable on the ground, post flight.

The results were: . . . . normal levels of exposure. The predictions had been wrong. All of us on the ground who knew about the solar flare had been worried unnecessarily. And the crew had been furious, unnecessarily.

Later, we were briefed on improvements made to the radiation prediction tools. And the folks that study such things said it would be awfully hard to get a significant dose of radiation inside the shuttle (not hard on EVA, though) since we fly below the Van Allen Belts; even at high latitudes. Years of more study have improved our understanding, monitoring, and predicting even more.

What did I learn? A lot. But most importantly, always tell the crew. That may have been one of my first, best, lessons as a Flight Director.

True story? Absolutely. At least the way I remember it . . . . Wayne Hale - Space Shuttle Flight Director

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