FLORIDA – NASA managers decided Saturday to delay the shuttle Discovery’s launch an additional day to Wednesday to give engineers enough time to complete replacement and retest of leaky quick-disconnect fittings in the ship’s right-side orbital maneuvering system rocket pod.
If all goes well, Discovery’s countdown will begin at 2 p.m. EDT Sunday, setting up a launch attempt at 3:52:13 p.m. on Wednesday, roughly the moment Earth’s rotation carries launch pad 39A into the plane of the space station’s orbit.
The forecast calls for a 70 per cent chance of acceptable weather Wednesday and Thursday, improving to 80 per cent “go” on Friday.
The shuttle Discovery, showing the location of an access panel where leaking quick-disconnect fittings had to be replaced, delaying launch on a space station resupply flight from Monday to Wednesday.
NASA Test Director Jeffrey Spaulding said engineers are “really confident” they can finish the work in time to start the countdown Sunday.
“The team has done an excellent job overnight. It’s been a lot of hard work,” he said. “I think they’ve done a great job and I look forward to getting the call to stations tomorrow” to start the countdown.
The primary goals of Discovery’s 39th and final mission are to deliver a loaded cargo storage module to the International Space Station, along with a spare set of cooling system radiators that will be mounted on the lab’s main power truss.
Assuming an on-time launch, Discovery would dock with the space station at 12:36 p.m. on Friday. Two spacewalks are planned, on November. 7 and 9, with undocking on tap November 12 at 5:02 a.m. and landing back at the Kennedy Space Centrr at 9:59 a.m. November 14.
Launch had been targeted for tomorrow, but engineers ran into problems overnight Thursday with leaking nitrogen and helium quick-disconnect couplings used by Discovery’s right-side OMS pod. The nitrogen gas is used to open and close a variety of valves, while the helium is used to pressurise propellant tanks in the rocket pod.
The repair work required engineers to vent high-pressure helium tanks in the OMS pod before swapping out the couplings. The replacement work was completed early yesterday and engineers began a series of leak tests to make sure the new fittings were tight before repressurising the helium system. (AP)
