Rockwell Engineers Spot Possible Cause of Space Shuttle Leak

Engineers at Rockwell International in California may have located the source of a mysterious hydrogen leak that grounded the space shuttle fleet, officials said today.

NASA spokesman Kyle Herring at Johnson Space Center in Houston said tests Sunday found hydrogen pouring from plumbing attachments that had been removed from space shuttle Columbia.

It was not immediately clear how long it will take to fix the leak and resume flights with the three-vehicle space shuttle fleet.

“How big the leak rate is, they don’t know yet,” Herring said. He also said the precise part of the maze of seals and valves that is leaking has not been found.

“They did get some sort of leak. It’s on the orbiter side,” he said. The winged spacecraft that carries the astronauts is called the orbiter.

Rockwell was testing an apparatus called the umbilical. This is a group of pipes and valves that link the orbiter with the external tank.