Inside the Wing<br /><br /> 11.10.04<br /><br /><br />Returning the Space Shuttle to flight is so important to Lisa Campbell,<br />she's willing to spend 10 hours a day crawling around on her hands and knees<br />to help make it happen.<br /><br />Campbell is an aerospace technician with United Space Alliance at NASA's<br />Kennedy Space Center in Florida. These days, she spends most of her time in<br />a crawlspace deep inside the left wing of Space Shuttle Discovery,<br />installing temperature sensors within the wing's leading edge.<br /><br />The sensors are part of the Wing Leading Edge Impact Detection System, a new<br />safety measure added for all future Space Shuttle missions. The system also<br />includes accelerometers that monitor the orbiter's wings for debris impacts<br />during launch and while in orbit. Sensor data will flow from the wing to the<br />crew compartment, where it will be transmitted to Earth. Campbell leads the<br />team installing the sensors on Discovery's left wing.<br /><br />There are 22 temperature sensors and 66 accelerometers on each wing. Rather<br />than wire and install each sensor one at a time, the work is being done in<br />three phases. Technicians already have completed the first step, which<br />involves bonding nuts to the wing at specific attach points. Now the crew is<br />completing the second process, routing wires to each of these locations from<br />relay boxes located on the sidewall of the main landing gear and the wing<br />glove, the forward portion of the wing. Finally, they will attach the wiring<br />to each sensor and fasten it to a nut already in place.<br /><br />Campbell's job requires her to crawl through three different open sections,<br />called cavities, to reach the wing's edge. She squeezes through small<br />openings -- about the size of a clothes dryer door -- that provide access<br />from one cavity to the next.<br /><br />"There's a big cavity to start with, and then you go through a little hole<br />and there's another cavity, and another hole and another cavity," Campbell<br />explains. "It gets smaller and smaller as you go farther back. And there's a<br />place all the way out to the end where, because there are two braces and a<br />wall, you have to just reach through with your hands."<br /><br />If that sounds hard enough, bear in mind that she has to carry a light<br />source and any necessary tools along with her while maneuvering around<br />structural parts of the orbiter's airframe.<br /><br />"The first week -- actually, the first two or three days I was in here doing<br />the wiring -- I couldn't walk," she admits. "My legs hurt so bad, I could<br />hardly stand up. At the end of the day, when I walked up the steps, they<br />just felt like jelly. But I found some new tools to make it a little easier,<br />like a little, teeny stool I can use in certain areas."<br /><br />Campbell enjoys the work despite the occasional discomfort.<br /><br />"We were in the wing the other day, and just from the angle, you could look<br />along the belly of the bird, and that was just so neat," she recalls,<br />shortly before venturing into the darkness of the wing again. "It was really<br />neat to stand there and look at it from a different perspective."<br /><br />Anna Heiney<br />NASA's John F. Kennedy Space Center