Discovery Launch Delayed For Second Time
Posted July 2, 2006 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Lift-off has been pushed to Tuesday when the weather is expected to improve, but rain is still in the forecast.
Tuesday’s lift-off will be the first shuttle launch in a year and the second since the 2003 Columbia disaster.
“We knew we were going to get in a race against the weather,” launch director Michael Leinbach said. “You can’t control the weather, and we have very strict rules.”
While the chances of NASA sending the shuttle into space at 3:26pm (EDT) Sunday were slim, the agency went through the motions of preparing the vehicle for lift-off anyway. Shuttle commander Steven Lindsey and the six other astronauts had boarded the craft an hour before the scheduled lift-off. The launch was called off shortly after.
Saturday’s launch was canceled just nine minutes before the shuttle was set to blast off. A small technical problem also arose that morning when officials detected one of Discovery’s thrusters had a failed heater, which is needed to keep the fuel from freezing. NASA officials gave the launch the green light anyway, before the bad weather rolled in, because the thruster isn’t needed during lift-off and it was a problem the astronauts could work around in orbit.
The mission’s top safety officer and chief engineer raised concerns about the launch two weeks ago. They wanted to see modifications to areas of the fuel tank to ensure pieces of foam that could potentially damage the shuttle don’t break off.
Changes were made to the external fuel tank after the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated over Texas when it re-entered the atmosphere. A piece of foam also broke off Discovery’s fuel tank during its launch last summer, which prompted NASA to ground the shuttle fleet for a year while engineers made design changes.
The Discovery crew will test shuttle inspection and repair techniques, deliver supplies to the international space station and drop the European Space Agency’s Thomas Reiter at the outpost for a six-month stay during its upcoming 12-day mission.
