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NASA Delays Shuttle Launch After Faulty System Discovered

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From Associated Press

NASA today postponed for at least two days Saturday’s planned launch of the space shuttle Discovery because of failure of a system that separates the booster rockets and fuel tank from the orbiter.

The liftoff of the shuttle with a crew of five astronauts was rescheduled for no earlier than March 13.

NASA spokesman Karl Kristofferson said the trouble is with a master events controller, one of two such shuttle systems that receive separation commands from the spaceship’s main computer. The problem showed up early today during a routine test.

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The controllers arm and fire explosive devices that separate the two solid fuel rockets two minutes after liftoff and the external fuel tank when the main engines burn out about 8 1/2 minutes into a flight.

“It’s definitely a bad controller,” Kristofferson said.

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