NASA begins examination of Discovery

Engineers will remove and inspect the component on the shuttle's external fuel tank that began leaking, and also will inspect a 20-inch crack that developed in the tank's foam insulation.

The crack is located in the inner foam on a different part of the tank than where the fuel leak occurred and is more than twice as long as initially thought, shuttle mission managers said.

"Right now they're basically trying to gather as much information as possible before they start actually making repairs for any of the issues that we're working," NASA spokesman Allard Beutel told SPACE.com. "It's not a matter of simply making the repairs. They want to know what caused this in the first place."

NASA has rescheduled the launch of Discovery on its last mission before retirement for Nov. 30.

Discovery is tasked with an 11-day supply mission to the International Space Station to deliver a humanoid robot assistant for the station crew and a new storage room for the orbiting lab.

Copyright 2010 United Press International, Inc. (UPI).