After Earlier Troubles, Columbia Sailing Toward a Smooth Launch
Everything seemed to be going NASA’s way Friday for sending the shuttle Columbia on a long-overdue science mission after one launch abort and weeks of technical glitches.
Columbia was “doing perfectly well,” said shuttle test director Mike Leinbach.
And meteorologists issued a rare launch-day forecast of a 100% chance of good weather for the 7:52 a.m. PDT liftoff today.
But there was still a little nervousness, especially considering the abrupt end to Columbia’s first countdown for the mission one month ago. A stuck valve caused the main engines to shut down three seconds before liftoff.
“A few things in this business you don’t like to do,” Leinbach said. “You never say never. You never say always. And you typically never say 0% chance of violation of a weather constraint.”
If Columbia takes off as scheduled today, carrying a German-sponsored laboratory research mission and two German physicists, it would be the shortest interval between flights in 32 years of U.S. manned space travel.
Discovery returned April 17 from NASA’s 54th shuttle flight.
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