Shuttle Launch Delayed by Sensor Failure
NASA called off Tuesday’s launching of the shuttle Discovery after a sensor on one of the main engines failed during fueling.
Engineers will not know the cause or extent of the problem until they can examine the shuttle’s rear compartment today, officials said, so the next liftoff attempt cannot take place before Sunday.
The sensor and the bundle of electrical cables attached to it are easy to replace, said Boyce Mix, deputy manager of NASA’s shuttle main engine project. That would allow officials to try again Sunday to send Discovery on a military mission of “Star Wars” research.
It would take a few extra days to put in a new controller, Mix said. The electronic package is about the size of a microwave oven.
“This is a first for us, and we don’t really understand why it happened,” Mix said of the failure.
The sensor failed early Tuesday as more than half a million gallons of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen were being pumped into Discovery’s external fuel tank.
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