Contingency Planning
There are various contingency plans for failures occurring during and immediately after launch, known as abort modes. If the comprehensive inspections of the shuttle's heat shield which was conducted once the vehicle was in orbit had suggested that it would not be able to survive a re-entry, or another problem occurred, then Atlantis, commanded by Brent Jett, would have been used to mount the STS-301 rescue mission which involves the shuttle crew transferring to the ISS then awaiting rescue. STS-121 was the first shuttle mission to carry an 8.5-meter cable designed to connect the flight deck manual controls used during landing to an avionics bay in the middeck allowing mission controllers to land the shuttle unmanned if required. However the Rescue Flight Resource Book released following STS-121 states that a controlled break-up rather than a landing was planned for a disabled shuttle.
One of the contingency plans most likely to be put into action was a landing at alternate site (primarily Dryden Flight Research Center and Edwards Air Force Base) in the event of bad weather at KSC. In addition to the specific plans, NASA had a generic "mishap response plan", and the shuttle software was pre-loaded with information on a large number of airfields that were potential landing sites. In many cases, the airfields were unaware of their presence in the shuttle software.
Read more about this topic: STS-121
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