Two NASA Ships Sail into City

UPDATED, 4:12 p.m.: According to NASA officials, the "Freedom Star" and "Liberty Star" ships are docked at the NH State Pier in Portsmouth in preparation for their next mission involving the SpaceX launch.

Trent J. Perrotto, a public affairs office at NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C., wrote in an e-mail on Monday afternoon the two NASA ships will collect video and images when the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches on April 30 at 12:22 p.m.

According to NASA's website, this mission is "a demonstration flight by Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, as part of its contract with NASA to have private companies launch cargo safely to the International Space Station."

Original story: Portsmouth area residents driving across the Route One Bypass bridge today might have noticed two ships bearing the insignia "NASA" emblazoned on their large smoke stacks.

According to Pease Development Authority Deputy Director David Mullen, the "Liberty Star" and "Freedom Star" arrived in Portsmouth early on Monday morning and are scheduled to be tied up at the scrap metal loading area of the New Hampshire State Pier for a few days.

Beyond that, Mullen could not say why the two National Aeronautics and Space Administration vessels arrived in the city or why they are docked near the scrap metal piles."You and I have the same question," Mullen said.

Mullen said New Hampshire Director of Ports and Harbors Geno Marconi did e-mail him over the weekend to let him know that he had been notified the two vessels were scheduled to come to the city.

According to NASA's website, the Freedom Star and Liberty Star are used to retrieve rocket boosters from the Space Shuttle that fall into the sea after launch.

According to NASA's website, the two ships generally head out into the Atlantic 24 hours before a Space Shuttle launch takes place at Cape Canaveral in Florida. Each ship retrieves one booster and each vessel has a crew of 10 people that consist of a captain, two mates, four seamen, two marine engineers and a cook. In addition, the NASA website says eight divers accompany each crew to perform the delicate retrieval operation.

According to the NASA website, the crews first retrieve the pilot chutes and main parachutes. They also have to locate and retrieve the drogue parachute and the 5,000-pound frustum that houses the chutes at the top of the booster. Eight divers from each vessel then board smaller boats and work on retrieving the rocket booster, according to the NASA website. They use a 1,500-pound apparatus called an enhanced diver-operated plug and air hose to get the water out of the booster, which allows it to float on the surface so it can be retrieved and towed back to port behind the vessel.

The Space Shuttle program completed its final mission in September when Discovery touched down. According to NASA's website, the next scheduled launch from Cape Canaveral is for the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on April 30 at 12:22 p.m. According to NASA's website, this mission is "a demonstration flight by Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, as part of its contract with NASA to have private companies launch cargo safely to the International Space Station."

Attempts to get comment from NASA officials at the federal agency's public information office in Washington, D.C. on Monday afternoon were unsuccessful.

On Monday afternoon, there wasn't too much activity taking place around the vessels as seen from the Route One Bypass bridge.

Pease Development Authority officials were in the process of trying to get more information about the reasons why the NASA ships are here, but Mullen was not sure how much information the ships' captains could even share given the sensitive nature of their work.