14 DAY TRIAL // Officials at the American space agency announce that they have delayed the rollout of shuttle Discovery by at least a day, due to a glitch in the space facility's water main.
The glitch will most likely not affect the long-term schedule of the shuttle, but has made engineering teams at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) spring into action, in a bid to fix the error.
When the malfunction was discovered, KSC officials were attempting to take the shuttle out of its hangar, and move it to the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB).
This is where the shuttles are usually mated with their external fuel tank and twin solid rocket boosters, in preparation for their rollout maneuver to the launch pad.
According to NASA spokesmen, a water main supplying the shuttle launch facility broke down. The 61-centimeter (24-inch) pipe is critical to shuttle operations, and so the move had to be delayed.
The new plans call for Discovery to be moved today, in maneuvers that are scheduled to begin no earlier than 1030 GMT (06.30am EDT).
“The center is closed down – only open to essential personnel,” explains Allard Beutel, who is a spokesman for NASA.
The measure affects the entire KSC, including the VAB and the Orbiter Processing Facility, which is in effect the shuttles' hangar.
NASA is preparing Discovery for a new mission to the International Space Station (ISS). The flight is scheduled to take place in November, and is designated as STS-133.
It will represent the orbiter's final sortie ever, according to the new flight manifest approved by NASA. Only one other shuttle mission is approved for takeoff after it.
Endeavor is now scheduled to fly to the ISS in February 2011, carrying the AMS experiments, a dark matter detector. Plans for an additional shuttle flight after that are currently being discussed, but nothing has yet been made public.
Back to the STS-133 mission, Beutel reveals that the day-long delay will most likely do little to jeopardize the orbiter launch date.
“We have enough cushion right now so it won't affect the target date, at least right now,” says the spokesman.
Training for the mission has already begun at the Johnson Space Center (JSC), in Houston, Texas, where six astronauts are conducting simulations of their flight, Space reports.