NASA delayed
the planned launch of its Phoenix Mars lander by 24 hours Tuesday as engineers trace
an apparent cabin leak aboard the shuttle Endeavour for a separate spaceflight.
The two
closely-spaced missions are slated to launch within days of each other from
Cape Canaveral, Florida, with Phoenix initially targeted for an Aug. 3 launch and
Endeavour's STS-118 astronaut crew aiming for an Aug. 7 liftoff.
But the
threat of poor weather Tuesday prevented pad crews from fueling the second
stage of the Delta 2 rocket to launch NASA's
Phoenix probe towards Mars from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The
delay forced mission managers to reset the planned launch for Saturday, Aug. 4
at 5:26:34 a.m. EDT (09:26:34 GMT).
"Thunderstorms
are rolling in so we're rescheduling the fueling for [Wednesday] morning,"
NASA spokesperson George Diller, at the agency's nearby Kennedy Space Center (KSC), told SPACE.com. "There's not enough contingency time to get to the
third, so we're slipping one day."
NASA's
Phoenix lander is designed to study the northern polar regions of Mars using a robotic,
shovel-like scoop to dig into the martian terrain and analyze the
planet's water ice. NASA must launch the $420 million mission within a 22-day
window that closes Aug. 24 or else wait another two years until Mars and Earth
are in the proper orbital positions for another attempt, mission managers have
said.
Given Phoenix's
limited launch window, NASA space shuttle program managers have said the Mars mission
is a high priority and could prompt a few days of delay for Endeavour's own
August liftoff. Currently, the Phoenix probe has launch opportunities through
Sunday before any shuttle delays would be required.
"It's
still too early to tell," NASA spokesperson Tracy Young, of KSC, told SPACE.com
on whether a shuttle launch delay may be needed.
Meanwhile,
engineers are continuing efforts to pin down an apparent leak somewhere within
Endeavour's crew cabin or the pressurized SPACEHAB cargo module in the
orbiter's payload bay.
Young said
engineers found signs of the leak over the weekend and initially attributed it
to a loose hose fitting on ground equipment. But the problem persisted after the
hose fitting was addressed, leaving engineers once more scanning the crew and
cargo module, as well as the pressurized tunnel and hatches running between
them, for signs of the leak.
"Right
now we're troubleshooting and engineering is evaluating it to try to isolate
the problem," Young said.
Commanded
by veteran shuttle flyer Scott Kelly, Endeavour's STS-118
mission is set to deliver a hefty load of cargo, spare parts and a new
piece of the space station's starboard-side framework. The up-to-14-day mission
will mark the first flight for teacher-turned-spaceflyer
Barbara Morgan, NASA's first educator astronaut.
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