Shuttle Scrubbed Until Next Week

NASA Says Late Next Week Is Earliest Possible Launch Time

(CBS/AP) 
The seven-astronaut crew had already climbed aboard the shuttle Discovery Wednesday when NASA halted the countdown with just 2½ hours to go, scrubbing the first shuttle flight since the 2003 Columbia tragedy.

Astronaut Cady Coleman has been in that position.

"You're just really disappointed, and yet, I think probably your second thought is for your friends and family that came to this launch," Coleman told Early Show co-anchor René Syler (video). "You're still going to go ... but your friends and family have bought plane tickets and hotel rooms and vacation time, and you're going to hear about all of that when you get home from this great trip!"

The disappointment came just a day after an embarrassing turn for NASA, when a plastic cockpit window cover fell off the shuttle and damaged its fragile thermal tiles before the spacecraft had even taken off.

From Cape Canaveral, where congressmen and astronaut families had come to witness the awe-inspiring sight of a rocket launch, to museums across the country where schoolchildren had gathered, the delay of the long-awaited return to space was disheartening.

"I wanted to see it really, really, really bad," groaned 8-year-old Michael Schamtin of Sherwood, Ore., who had waited for liftoff at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry.

Thousands of people had descended on the space center for the launch, including John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth, members of Congress, and family members of the seven fallen Columbia astronauts. Lawmakers and others refrained from second-guessing NASA's decision to press ahead before it had gotten to the bottom of the fuel gauge problem.

"I'm disappointed for all of us," said Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla. But he added, "The system is working like it should."

"The significance of the scrub on this particular mission is showing that they're doing it right," former astronaut Kathryn Thornton told CBS News. "They want the vehicle to be in as good a shape as it can be before they launch."

The fuel depletion sensors are a critical safeguard against potentially catastrophic failures.

"They're there to protect us in case we run out of gas," Hale said. "Now we don't plan to run out of gas. As a matter of fact, we launch with some fairly comfortable propellant reserves in the external tank to allow for dispersions that might happen within the launch phase. So you have to have something go wrong to really need these sensors. That's the first thing you really need to understand."

"They're kind of a safety net for other systems on board, and they have a flight rule that says all four of these sensors have to be working before you can continue the countdown and launch," said Harwood.

Asked if NASA might amend the flight rules to get Discovery off the ground, Hale said: "The answer to that is no. Every time we have reviewed the rules, we've come to the same conclusion. They're in place for good reason."