Bad Night for NASA Adds to Shuttle Delay
“Snakebit” NASA engineers, beset by a launch pad fuel leak and pump trouble, were forced to delay a practice countdown for the shuttle Discovery today until Monday, pushing a key main engine test-firing to Thursday--five days behind schedule.
“It was one of those ‘it wasn’t our kind of night’ kind of days,” said launch director Robert Sieck.
NASA had hoped to launch Discovery on the first post-Challenger mission in late September, but an actual launch date will depend on when the engine firing occurs and what engineers do to fix a previously known fuel leak in a steering rocket system.
As of Thursday, Discovery could not have been ready for blastoff until Sept. 13 at the earliest and then only by electing not to repair the fuel leak. Given the three-day slip for the engine test and up to two weeks to repair the fuel leak in the steering pod, blastoff could be on the verge of slipping into October.
The latest countdown problems developed shortly after engineers began pumping fuel aboard Discovery at 9:10 p.m. Thursday in the first such exercise since the Challenger disaster 2 1/2 years ago.
The fueling test, a required rehearsal before the unmanned engine firing, was already running two days behind schedule .
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