Peckish Woodpeckers Delay Space Shuttle Discovery’s Next Mission

NASA delayed next week’s launching of the space shuttle Discovery on Friday out of safety concerns that arose when woodpeckers punched dozens of holes in the foam insulation of a fuel tank as the spacecraft sat on a launch pad at Florida’s Kennedy Space Center.

“The little birds got the better of the big birds in this case,” NASA spokesman Bruce Buckingham said, making light of the delay.

The mission was put off after workers were sent aloft in a 25-story crane to make repairs Friday, only to fail when stiff Atlantic Ocean winds left them unable to get near some holes in the foam insulation at the top of the shuttle’s external tank.

NASA managers decided afterward that the shuttle would have to be towed back to the Vehicle Assembly Building, about three miles away from the launch pad. As a result, NASA said, the launch would be put off until at least July and possibly August.

It is believed to be the first time that woodpeckers, pesky birds that exact a heavy toll on all kinds of outdoor structures, have caused such severe problems for the space shuttle program.

Woodpeckers peck in a ritual to attract mates and stake out territory, but why they pecked into the external tank’s thick orange foam has left NASA officials baffled.

The Kennedy Space Center is surrounded by a wildlife preserve, forcing NASA to take special measures to keep birds, wild pigs or other animals from damaging spacecraft.

NASA uses owl decoys and sound blasters to keep birds away from the shuttle, but Buckingham said they weren’t certain why these efforts didn’t deter the woodpeckers. It is equally unclear what NASA can do differently in the future to protect the shuttle, Buckingham added.

“It isn’t like they could go out with shotguns and blow them away,” said John Pike, a space expert at the Federation of American Scientists. “What is so fascinating about this is that the shuttle is made out of foam.”

NASA officials insisted that the launch delay would not cost anything, because the agency’s annual budget is fixed and will not increase as a result of the delay. But space industry experts dismissed that claim as absurd and estimated the launch delay could cost as much as $1 million.

The foam insulation protects the tank’s liquid hydrogen and oxygen from aerodynamic heating at launch. After the shuttle reaches orbit, the tank is jettisoned.

But pulling the Discovery off the launch pad is a laborious and time-consuming procedure. Just the tractor alone burns 1,000 gallons of diesel fuel in making the round trip, one outside expert noted.

The repair procedure will also require that Discovery’s payload, a tracking and relay satellite built by TRW Corp., will have to be removed from the orbiter and moved to a clean-room facility. The TRW payload is one of the few communications satellites still launched aboard the space shuttle.

NASA would like to launch Discovery in early July, but that may fall too close to the important mission to the Russian Mir space station that will start in the third week of June.