Written by Derek Kessler on
Thursday, 27 December 2007
Following the discovery of the disconnect inside a connector that bridged the gap between the space shuttle Atlantis and its massive external fuel tank that resulted in faulty readings from the tank's fuel sensors, NASA today announced that the launch of Atlantis would be delayed indefinitely while engineers fixed the problem. The sensor failures - a critical fail-safe system for launch safey, cancelled the launch of the shuttle and the International Space Station-bound Columbus Laboratory aboard early this month.
NASA shuttle program manager Wayne Hale said that it would probably take a few days to a week to pinpoint and repair the problem with the connector. Because of the uncertainty with regards to how exactly to proceed, NASA has chosen to not schedule a definite lift-off date for Atlantis. In the meantime, engineers have removed the connector and attached plugs and sent it to a NASA facility in Alabama for testing and repair. Currently, it is not anticipated that Atlantis will have to be taken off the launch pad, which would result in a massive delay to the launch schedule.
Following the discovery of the disconnect inside a connector that bridged the gap between the space shuttle Atlantis and its massive external fuel tank that resulted in faulty readings from the tank's fuel sensors, NASA today announced that the launch of Atlantis would be delayed indefinitely while engineers fixed the problem. The sensor failures - a critical fail-safe system for launch safey, cancelled the launch of the shuttle and the International Space Station-bound Columbus Laboratory aboard early this month.
