NASA Calls Off Discovery Launch

Faulty Fuel Gauge Forces Delay Until At Least Saturday

(CBS/AP) 
A temporary window cover fell off the shuttle (video) and damaged thermal tiles near the tail Tuesday afternoon, just two hours after NASA declared Discovery ready to return the nation to space for the first time since the Columbia disaster.

That mishap was an eerie reminder of the very thing that doomed Columbia — damage to the spaceship's fragile thermal shield.

"In any countdown, we have these problems but we don't have a horde of reporters reporting it," said Harwood.

"We are disappointed, but we'll fly again on another day," said David Wolf, an astronaut speaking from launch control.

"We have done everything that we know to do," NASA Administrator Michael Griffin said afterward. "Can there be something that we don't know about that can bite us? Yeah. This is a very tough business."

There is no overestimating the importance of this launch, reports CBS News Correspondent Peter King.

"Obviously, it is utterly crucial, for NASA, for the nation, for our space program, to fly a safe mission," said Griffin.

When asked if a successful return to flight would vindicate NASA, Griffin said that's not possible, that there is no recovery from that kind of a mistake.

"Through 100 years of aviation, the safety lessons that we who fly have learned and know are written in; other people's blood," Griffin said.

The families of the seven astronauts killed during Columbia's catastrophic re-entry praised the accident investigators, a NASA oversight group and the space agency itself for defining and reducing the dangers.

Like those who lost loved ones in the Apollo 1 spacecraft fire and the Challenger launch explosion, the Columbia families said they grieve deeply "but know the exploration of space must go on."

"We hope we have learned and will continue to learn from each of these accidents so that we will be as safe as we can be in this high-risk endeavor," they said in a statement. "Godspeed, Discovery."

"We'll take [the Columbia crew's] pictures and put it on the mid-deck so we can see it every day," shuttle commander Eileen Collins told CBS News Early Show co-anchor Reneé Syler (video). "Because we are doing what they would want us to do and we're carrying on their mission. All of us have learned from this. We're not going to forget it."

A chunk of foam insulation the size of a carry-on suitcase fell off Columbia's fuel tank at liftoff and slammed into a reinforced carbon panel on the shuttle's wing, creating a hole that brought the spacecraft crashing down in pieces during its return to Earth on Feb. 1, 2003.