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Space shuttle Discovery’s final mission is off until February. NASA managers announced the latest delay for Discovery on Friday. They say they need more time to analyze cracks in the shuttle’s fuel tank. The damage cropped up following a failed launch attempt in early November. Discovery remains on the launch pad, holding a load of equipment for the International Space Station. Officials want to conduct a fueling test to better understand the problem. Officials say they will tentatively aim for a liftoff on Feb. 3. That will result in a postponement for shuttle Endeavour, which had been scheduled to soar...

The final launch of Space Shuttle Discovery will take place no earlier than 3 December. Weather permitting, the launch - originally set for September but postponed to 1 November because the payload was not ready and then to 30 November after a hydrogen leak was discovered while filling the external fuel tank - is now expected at 02:52 Eastern Standard Time. The current launch window will be open until 5 December. The countdown-stopping leak was at the ground umbilical carrier plate, an attachment point between the external tank and a 178mm (7in) pipe that carries gaseous hydrogen safely away from...

With repairs to the fuel tank of the shuttle Discovery still underway, NASA shuttle program managers on Nov. 18 retargeted the earliest date for a second round of launch opportunities for the agency’s senior orbiter from Nov. 30 to Dec. 3. The delay will permit more time for agency managers to establish flight rationale using the repaired fuel tank. The upcoming launch period will close three days later to permit a Dec. 15 Soyuz launching with three U.S., Russian and European space station crewmembers. Other station activities and shuttle thermal control system restrictions are steering the opening of the next...

Preliminary analysis of the space shuttle’s Discovery’s leaking Ground Umbilical Carrier Plate (GUCP) shows a misaligned seal, a NASA spokesman said Nov. 11. “Not to get ahead of the engineering investigation, but they’re analyzing the flight seal, which they found wasn’t aligned properly. The team plans to install a new GUCP ... connectors, seal, etc., by tomorrow,” Kennedy Space Center spokesman Allard Beutel said in an e-mail to Aviation Week. The GUCP leak forced NASA to cancel its Nov. 5 launch attempt of Discovery on the STS-133 mission, an 11-day space station assembly and maintenance mission that will be the...

NASA has postponed the launch of Discovery’s 11-day mission to the International Space Station until no earlier than Nov. 30, following a substantial leak of hydrogen gas at a launch pad vent-line fitting during a Nov. 5 countdown to the orbiter’s 39th and final mission. The leak at the Ground Umbilical Carrier Plate (GUCP), surfaced before 8 a.m. EDT, and the pre-launch Mission Management Team (MMT) initially braced for repairs that would permit another flight attempt on Nov. 8, a day beyond the nominal closing of the launch window. However, it soon became clear that the lack of rapid access...

NASA will Thursday try to launch space shuttle Discovery on its final voyage, although stormy weather could force yet another delay. Mission managers met Wednesday afternoon and into the evening to discuss an electrical problem that forced the latest postponement. They concluded the circuit breaker trouble no longer exists and the shuttle is safe to fly. But forecasters warned there is an 80 per cent chance that thunderstorms will keep Discovery on the pad. Liftoff is scheduled for 3:29 p.m. (1929 GMT).

NASA managers met Monday to review preparations for the space shuttle Discovery launch on STS-133, clearing the spacecraft for liftoff Wednesday on what will be its 39th and final flight. It was a quick meeting, with unanimous consent to press ahead with a launch attempt at 3:52 p.m. EDT. “If I wouldn’t have talked about how quickly it was going, it would have gone even faster. We didn’t have any technical issues to discuss,” quips Mike Moses, shuttle launch integration manager at Kennedy Space Center. Over the weekend, technicians plugged helium and nitrogen leaks in the shuttle’s right-side Orbital Maneuvering...

NASA managers cleared space shuttle Discovery for launch at 4:40 p.m. EDT Nov. 1, following a review of weekend repair work to fix a small leak in the flange area of the Orbital Maneuvering System (OMS). “We’re in great shape out at the pad,” Launch Director Mike Leinbach told reporters Oct. 25 following NASA’s Flight Readiness Review for the STS-133 mission, the 39th and final planned mission for Discovery. The replacement of two seals in the OMS flange ate up the four contingency days that had been remaining in the shuttle’s processing schedule, but Leinbach said he saw no reason...

The Space Shuttle Program’s final flight tank, designated External Tank-138, has completed a critical production milestone at the NASA Michoud Assembly Facility. Lockheed Martin builds the External Tanks in New Orleans where its engineers and technicians mechanically spliced ET-138’s liquid oxygen (LO2)/intertank to the liquid hydrogen (LH2) tank, thus producing “a whole tank” for the first time in the production process. The work is performed in Cell A in the 20-story-tall Vertical Assembly Building, and is the only time during production that the tank is standing upright. Workers also completed foam closeouts on the LH2 to intertank flange. An External...