Sensor Blamed in Shutdown of Shuttle Engine
A shutdown of a main engine that threatened to dump Challenger into the ocean during launch was caused by faulty sensors and not flawed rockets, meaning that future shuttle flights can go ahead as scheduled, a NASA source said today.
The computer-ordered shutdown left Challenger, its seven crewmen and a cargo of science instruments in a lower-than-planned orbit and with a shortage of fuel.
To add to the problems, the astronauts discovered today that a $60-million pointing device that is a key element of four experiments was drifting erratically and was unable to focus the instruments on specific targets on the sun.
Sources said a study of pressures and fuel flow patterns “almost conclusively” determined that Monday’s launch problems were caused by temperature sensors giving false information to computers aboard the $1.2-billion Challenger.
“The engines burned as expected,” one source said. “They would have performed normally if the bad data had not been fed to the computers.”
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