NASA Aims For Wednesday Shuttle Launch

Space Station Construction Mission Delayed By Fuel Leak; But New Date Conflicts With Another Launch

(AP)  NASA is repairing a leaky hydrogen gas line on Endeavour's fuel tank in hopes of launching the shuttle on its space station construction mission Wednesday, four days after the first try was called off.

But another NASA mission, involving a pair of science spacecraft bound for the moon, is scheduled to blast off Wednesday. Top space agency officials will decide Monday whether to bump the moon mission to make way for Endeavour.

Mission management team chairman LeRoy Cain said it's likely Endeavour will go first — if the repair effort goes well, no other shuttle problems crop up and the weather cooperates.

"A lot of things have to go our way," Cain said Sunday.

Hydrogen gas began leaking from a vent line hookup on Endeavour's external tank during fueling early Saturday, and the countdown was halted just hours before the scheduled morning liftoff.

The same kind of leak postponed a shuttle launch in March. Technicians replaced the vent line hookup and a pair of Teflon seals back then, and the leak did not recur. NASA is hoping for similar results this time. The hookup and seal replacements on Endeavour's tank were expected to be completed Monday morning.

Engineers never determined why the vent line leaked in March. Finding the cause has taken on new urgency.

NASA finds itself in the difficult and unusual position of having to choose between two space missions that both have a relatively short time to launch.

Endeavour must fly by this weekend, otherwise the mission to deliver the final piece of the Japanese space station lab must wait until mid-July because of unfavorable sun angles that would heat up the shuttle. The moon mission — NASA's first in a decade — must be launched by Saturday as well, otherwise it will have to wait until the end of the month for another shot.

One of the lunar spacecraft, an orbiter, is designed to map the moon so NASA can determine where best to put an outpost for astronauts in years to come. The other craft will smash into a shadowed crater at one of the moon's poles to check for signs of frozen water.

Cain said NASA could maximize the number of launch attempts for both missions if it tries to launch Endeavour on Wednesday. The Air Force would need a day to reconfigure its systems for the unmanned Atlas V rocket, then NASA could try to launch its lunar spacecraft Friday, with Saturday as a backup.

Endeavour's seven astronauts were sticking around Kennedy Space Center, to be ready to go whenever they get the call.

If the shuttle launch ends up bumping into July, there would be a ripple effect for the following few shuttle launches, Cain said. But the space agency could still meet a 2010 deadline, he said, for finishing the international space station and retiring the three remaining shuttles. At that point, NASA would focus on new spacecraft intended for landing astronauts on the moon by 2020.

As for the launch weather, forecasters put the odds of favorable conditions at 70 percent for Endeavour early Wednesday morning. The Atlas rocket with the lunar spacecraft, on the other hand, would have a 60 percent chance of taking off in its Wednesday afternoon slot, because of the increased likelihood of storm clouds.

[dartplayer501]

posted by stn_sage

My opinion is simple: keep your schedules, keep your commitments to the public, report the truth, OR shut it all down! And, save the public the monies that can be used on something else MORE productive!

Are you aware that NASA's budget is a mere $20 billion, while the Pentagon's is $711 billion? Which one is money better spent? Please check out www.thespaceplace.com/nasa/spinoffs.html to see all the tech aids we would be living without if it were not for the sapce program. IMO also it is better to delay lift off of the world's most expensive and complicated machine for a hydrogen leak, than for the whole kitnkaboodle go BOOM!

"it appears NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratories, alter the pictures taken, and DO NOT report the truth of what they've found to the public who paid for the missions!"

Where did you read that??? Sources please.

[ayatoldya]

Why not launch them both? It's not like it's rocket science anymore.

[lucytomato]

Hey,boy,don't be so impatient ,you know safety is most important thing ,we still remember Colombia ,we hope our astronauts go back pacifically .

[stn_sage]

ANOTHER postponement---AGAIN?! When all is said and done---NASA is a two-headed Goliath! It has the positive factor of enormous potential in acquiring knowledge and advancing science on the one hand; but, on the other, far too many times it FAILS to produce any noteworthy results and WASTES incredible amounts of money! Most of it's activities appear to be nothing more than "eye candy" for the consumption of the public!

Probably the greatest thing it's done, is the series of relatively cheap orbital satellites that it has launched through the decades around the moon and Mars! After acquiring tens of thousands of pictures of the surface of both these bodies, it appears NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratories, alter the pictures taken, and DO NOT report the truth of what they've
found to the public who paid for the missions!

My opinion is simple: keep your schedules, keep your commitments to the public, report the
truth, OR shut it all down! And, save the public the monies that can be used on something
else MORE productive!

[erasmus111]

"Engineers never determined why the vent line leaked in March. Finding the cause has taken on new urgency. "

It happened before, they fixed it, and then now it's happened again.

I'm not sure I have much faith in them getting it right again next time.

I don't know that I would be wanting to take a chance on something like that.