Shuttle launch plan still up in the air

Marcia Dunn, Cape Canaveral

Deputy shuttle programme manager Wayne Hale said the space agency still probably faces several days of troubleshooting to figure out what caused the faulty fuel-gauge reading that forced the cancellation of Wednesday’s launch.

The only way the shuttle would be able to fly on Sunday is “if we go in and wiggle some wires and find a loose connection”, said Mr Hale, who conceded that was unlikely to work.

Wednesday’s lift-off would have been the first shuttle flight in two-and-a-half years since the grounding of the space programme after the Columbia disaster, in which seven astronauts died.

With little more than two hours to go and the astronauts on-board, the flight was cancelled because a fuel gauge read full when it should have read empty.

Mr Hale said the space agency had 12 engineering teams around the country trying to figure out why, but so far they haven’t solved the problem.

“I wish I had more answers for you,” he said.

He said he wouldn’t rule out the chance of launching Discovery in July, and NASA officials have no immediate plans to move Discovery from the launch pad back to its hangar, which would lead to further delay.

NASA has until the end of the month to send the shuttle and its seven astronauts to space on their 12-day mission or it must wait until September. The launch timing is dictated by both the position of the space station and NASA’s desire to hold a daylight lift-off so it can photograph the spacecraft during its climb to orbit and watch out for possible damage.

“I’m not ready to give up on a July window,” Mr Hale said. “We still have several days ahead of us.”

Shuttle managers have been criticised for pressing ahead with the launch when the same type of potentially fatal problem with the fuel gauges cropped up during a fuelling test just three months ago`. Some engineers had pushed for further testing but were overruled by top managers.