‘Fingers Crossed,’ Shuttle Countdown Starts Again

With time running out, the shuttle Columbia’s countdown resumed Saturday for a last-ditch launch attempt to avoid another major delay for the leak-plagued astronomy mission.

“We’re keeping our fingers crossed,” NASA launch director Robert Sieck said. “The team has worked hard (and) we’re due to win one.”

With Columbia running more than three months behind schedule, Sieck said the space agency has only a few days to get the ship off the launch pad or the mission will be delayed until after a higher-priority, $750-million flight next month by the shuttle Discovery to carry the European Ulysses solar probe into space.

Another factor is the planned launch of an unmanned Titan 4 rocket later this week, sources say, to carry a classified military satellite into orbit. Because NASA and the Air Force share military tracking equipment, rocket launches cannot be conducted much less than 36 hours apart.

Hoping for the best, engineers restarted Columbia’s oft-interrupted countdown at 1 a.m. Saturday, and if all goes well, the $2-billion orbiter and its seven-man crew will blast off at 10:28 p.m. PDT Monday to kick off a 10-day astronomy mission.

Despite an 80% chance of good weather, NASA managers were hedging their bets on when Columbia might finally make it into orbit because of multiple fuel leaks and an electrical glitch that have combined to delay the mission.

And even though engineers believe they have finally plugged all of Columbia’s leaks, they say they will not know for sure until supercold liquid hydrogen rocket fuel is pumped back aboard the ship’s external tank Monday.

Columbia skipper Vance Brand, 59; co-pilot Guy Gardner, 42; astronaut Robert Parker, 53, and civilian astronomer Ronald Parise, 39, were scheduled to fly to the Kennedy Space Center from Houston late Saturday for final preparations.

Their crewmates--John (Mike) Lounge, 44; Jeffrey Hoffman, 45, and astronomer Samuel Durrance, 46--planned to join them this afternoon.

The astronauts are scheduled to spend 10 days in orbit aiming a $150-million suite of telescopes at especially violent stars and galaxies to learn more about the forces that shape the universe. Landing is planned for Sept. 27 at Edwards Air Force Base.