When space shuttle goes up, Yokota
becomes emergency landing site
By Jennifer H. Svan, Tokyo
bureau chief
YOKOTA AIR BASE, Japan — Fire trucks with lights blazing stood ready to foam down
the C-9 Nightingale approaching the runway.
Rescue crews waited on high alert to lift the injured astronaut out of the craft and
relay him to medical treatment.
Fast-acting military personnel responded to the plane and its seven passengers as they
would a crippled NASA space shuttle coming in for an emergency landing. They practice
because Yokota is one of 56 international locations designated as an alternate landing
site for the space shuttle. It was selected five years ago.
Marty Linde, landing support officer for NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston,
said not only does Yokota meet all the requirements to be an emergency landing site,
"it’s in a good geographic location."
The closest alternative landing sites to Yokota are Anderson Air Force Base in Guam and
Elmendorf Air Force Base in Alaska.
The majority are in the United States.
Yokota would serve as a backup only if the shuttle malfunctioned while in orbit and not
during a launch.
And a faltering shuttle would only target Yokota in extreme circumstances where there
was not enough time to reach the United States, Linde said.
"Depending on the criticality of the emergency, we try to have no more than a
20-minute gap before we could actually push the button [to deorbit] and come down and land
safely," he said.
John Sheets, public affairs officer with the 374th Airlift Wing at Yokota, called the
chances of the shuttle actually landing at the base remote.
"We’re a backup to a backup," he said.
In an emergency, the shuttle would try to reach either Kennedy Space Center near Cape
Canaveral, Fla., White Sands Test Facility in White Sands, N.M., or Edwards Air Force Base
in California, Linde said.
But considering that the space shuttle circles the world every 92 minutes while in
orbit, alternate landing sites are needed around the globe, Linde said.
And "you never know. Ideally, you’ll never have to use them, if everything
works completely right," he said. "Depressurization can be caused by just a
small piece of something floating in space, puncturing the [Orbiter Maneuvering System]
tank or the crew cabin.
"Those are probably our biggest concerns, or mechanical failure," he added.
Many of the shuttle’s designated emergency landing sites are on military bases,
Linde said.
"In a lot of places, we have to go to the individual country, like in
Australia," he said. "We always need a runway of at least 7,500 feet [long] and
at least 130 feet wide."
During a simulated landing of the shuttle at Yokota on May 17 – the first one at
the base in at least two years – mission control at the Johnson Space Center
communicated with Yokota’s base commander by cellular phone and the Department of
Defense Support Operations Center at Patrick Air Force Base in Florida to coordinate the
response. The base commander called the shots once the C-9 touched down, Linde said.
The exercise was conducted under the pretense that the weather was too bad for the
shuttle to land on Guam.
"That left us with Yokota as the best choice," Linde said.
The first step was notifying Yokota of the need to land there.
The base would have one hour and 4 minutes to prepare for an emergency landing, Linde
said.
Sheets said fire, security and medical personnel from Yokota were on scene when the
craft landed. The response was "similar to any in-flight emergency," he said.
An area of about 1,250 feet was cordoned off for a practice "sniff check,"
Linde said, which would be used to ensure no toxic chemicals were released from the
shuttle.
The first priority during an emergency landing is the safety of ground personnel,
followed by the shuttle crew, and, depending on the situation, the shuttle itself as a
national asset, Linde said.
The shuttle would land like a glider; it would not have engine power and would have one
chance to find the runway.
"We could not land if the runway is not clear, and we cannot talk to Yokota,"
Linde said. "The crew is prepared to bail out and ditch the orbiter in the
ocean."
Linde said Japan supports Yokota as an alternate landing site for the space shuttle,
noting that Japan is a member of the International Space Station Partnership.
Calls to Japan’s International Space Policy department in the Ministry of
Education, Science and Technology were not immediately returned.
The shuttle has never had to make an emergency landing from orbit, Linde said.
The only two problems since the shuttle program’s inception in 1981 was the 1986
Challenger explosion, 1 minute and 13 seconds after liftoff, and an aborted mission a year
earlier when a main engine shut down prematurely.
"The shuttle is very, very safe," Linde said.
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