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Endeavour launch put off till Wednesday
by Jamie Anderson - June 15, 2009 - comments
NASA finds itself in a peculiar situation of having to decide between two space missions, The Endeavour and the LRO, both having a short time for launch
Cape Canaveral, FL, June 15: A leak linked to the gaseous hydrogen venting system has prompted NASA to delay the launch of the space shuttle Endeavour by a couple of days.
The mission STS-127 headed for the International Space Station (ISS) for some construction work will now begin Wednesday.
The problem
Very little detail of the actual problem resulting in the delay has been divulged by NASA. Sources familiar with the matter state that the problem is associated with the system that carries surplus hydrogen safely away from the launch pad.
Discovery encountered a similar problem before its launch in March. At that time, technicians had restored the vent line hookup using a pair of Teflon seals. The leak did not reappear thereafter. NASA would be looking forward to identical results this time.
Endeavour will blast off in space on Wednesday if everything is working right with regard to the venting system, no other hurdle crops up and if the weather cooperates. Mission management team chairman, LeRoy Cain, said, "A lot of things have to go our way."
If, for any reason, Endeavour does not fly by this weekend, the mission will have to wait until mid-July because of adverse sun angles that would heat up the shuttle.
The 16-day task of Endeavour entails five spacewalks and completion of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's Kibo laboratory. The astronauts will fasten a platform on the outside of the Japanese module. The extension would enable experiments to be exposed to space.
Delay in LRO
The attempt to launch Endeavour on Wednesday at 5:40 a.m. EDT (0940 GMT) would mean the postponement of earlier scheduled launch of the unmanned Atlas rocket carrying the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft till Friday.
This pioneering mission is an initiative aimed at returning astronauts to the surface of the moon by 2020.
The LRO finds itself in a somewhat same situation as Endeavour. This moon mission, NASA's first in a decade, has to take off by the weekend, failing which it will have till the month end for the next take-off opportunity.