The Nation : Shuttle Test Will Proceed, Despite Leak

NASA managers decided to press on with plans to test fire the shuttle Discovery’s main engines amid work to figure out how to fix a gas leak that otherwise threatens a major delay for the first post-Challenger flight. Discovery’s three hydrogen-fueled main engines, which are not affected by the leak, will be fired July 28, three days after a practice countdown, in an unmanned, 20-second test of the overall shuttle system. The decision to proceed with the test gives engineers more than a week to come up with a way to resolve the fuel leak issue without returning Discovery to the hangar, National Aeronautics and Space Administration spokesman Chuck Hollinshead said. Engineers determined that the source of the gas leak was in a fitting on a line leading to an oxidizer tank that serves an engine system used to steer the shuttle in orbit. Hollinshead said an option was to launch Discovery without repairing the leak, if it were determined not to be a flight hazard. If Discovery has to be taken off the pad, its planned launching on Sept. 6 would be delayed up to two months.