Leak Grounds Shuttle Columbia Until at Least August

A fuel leak will keep the shuttle Columbia and its $150-million Astro observatory grounded at least until August, NASA officials announced Thursday.

The next shuttle mission will be that of Atlantis, which is scheduled to carry a secret military payload into orbit in mid-July.

“It is our intent to make sure that these vehicles are ready and safe to fly,” shuttle director Robert L. Crippen said. “When we have a problem such as this, and this is the nature of the machines that we’re dealing with, we just have to fall back and regroup and put them in a condition that is safe to go fly.”

Columbia’s next flights will be pushed back “in an orderly fashion,” Crippen added. A scientific research mission scheduled for August is now set for December, pushing Columbia’s December mission with a microgravity laboratory into next year.

As a result of the schedule revision, NASA will launch only eight shuttle missions this year instead of nine.

Columbia will be moved from the launching pad back to the hangar next week so the hydrogen leak can be repaired, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration reported Wednesday. The leak was detected as more than a half-million gallons of super-cold liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen were being pumped into the shuttle for last week’s launching attempt.

A test Wednesday confirmed NASA’s suspicion that the leak is in or near a tight cavity between two metal plates that connect the orbiter and external tank. The orbiter and tank will have to be disconnected, a job that can be performed only at the hangar.

Crippen said that pipes and valves probably will have to be replaced in that area and another external tank used. He refused to estimate how much the repairs will cost and how much the delay already has cost.

“We don’t know specifically what we’ve got to go do to fix the thing,” he said. “The problem we’re dealing with is unique. We’ve never seen it before . . . .

“Until we pull it apart and do some detailed trouble-shooting on it, we’ll be unable to say specifically what the problem is,” he said. “However, I feel very comfortable proceeding with the next launch.”

The Astro mission already was two weeks late because of cooling system repairs. The mission originally was scheduled for 1986 but was delayed by the Challenger explosion.