14 DAY TRIAL // Update (11:11 GMT, 0711 EDT): The launch of space shuttle Discovery has been delayed for 24 hours due to bad weather around the launch site. Stay tuned for more ***
Officials at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) decided to go ahead with plans to launch the space shuttle Discovery today, November 4, after engineering teams managed to handle an electrical glitch that occurred in one of the orbiter's computers.
However, the new approval could be meaningless, in the sense that abysmal weather forecasts will most likely ground the shuttle today as well. It was originally scheduled to take off on November 1.
At the start of this week, the forecast was looking very well, with the shuttle having a 70 percent chance of good rain, but now the tides have turned, and the launch effort has the same chance of experiencing excessive winds at the launch pad, or showers over Florida,.
As far as the faulty electrical circuit that was discovered two days ago, the repair teams at the NASA say that the anomaly is not caused by a glitch in the engine controller itself, but rather by residual contamination on a circuit breaker connection.
In order to fix the problem, the engineers scrubbed the connectors, which cleaned their metallic surfaces, and made the flight-worthy again, Space reports.
“We talked overnight, the team brought us a very nice, cohesive flow through the data. We had a unanimous poll out of the [mission management team], and everyone was very comfortable with the story that came together today,” said Mike Moses.
The official, who is the NASA shuttle integration manager, made the announcement in a news briefing. As such, Discovery is now scheduled to launch on its final mission at 3:29 pm EDT (1929 GMT) today.
An updated weather forecast by the American space agency shows that there is currently an 80 percent chance that Florida will be plagued with bad weather today. Things are looking up for Friday though, the same brief shows.
Discovery's last mission, dubbed STS-133, will take it to the International Space Station (ISS), where it will deliver spare parts to the six-astronaut crew in orbit.
It will also carry a logistics module and a new humanoid robot called Robonaut 2, which was developed by NASA and General Motors to help astronauts doing spacewalks with difficult tasks.
The shuttle will return home after spending some 11 days attached to the ISS. After being processed, the spacecraft will most likely go to the Smithsonian museum in Washington DC, for display.
Two other shuttle missions will take place before the program ends. Endeavor will fly to the ISS carrying the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer in February 2011, and Atlantis will make its last flight in June 2011.