NASA Shuttle Inspection Likely to Delay Launch

NASA has decided to remove and inspect engine pumps aboard the shuttle Discovery, revising the launch processing schedule and making it virtually impossible to meet an Aug. 4 target date for the first post-Challenger launch, agency sources say.

Although Aug. 4 remains the official target, the launch schedule has been so severely compressed there are no “contingency” days left in the processing flow to handle unexpected problems, United Press International reported.

A NASA management council meeting on April 14 at the Johnson Space Center in Houston is expected to result in a new internal launch target date and sources said Friday that Aug. 11 is a possibility.

With the decision to remove Discovery’s liquid oxygen turbo-pumps for inspection, the schedule for a launch-pad test-firing has been pushed back a week, eliminating contingency time for handling unexpected problems and making the Aug. 4 date improbable, the sources said.

Compounding the problem, the fifth and final full-scale solid-fuel booster test-firing, originally scheduled for early July, has slipped to the middle of the month. Discovery will not be cleared for launch until the rocket is disassembled and inspected, a process that will take at least 10 days.

The decision to remove the engine pumps was made, agency sources said, to make sure that critical bolts inside the pumps were tightened just the right amount. Should a bolt be stripped, it could back out during engine operation, which could prove disastrous.

There is no evidence that any bolts are stripped, but the space agency does not want to take any chances because of the Challenger explosion two years ago that killed the seven crew members.

Meanwhile, a National Aeronautics and Space Administration spokesman said Saturday a stress test showed that the shuttle’s redesigned rocket boosters apparently can withstand the weight of the orbiter and launch pressures.

The structural load test was another step in certifying the shuttle for flight, said a spokesman at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.