This
story was updated at 9:50 a.m. EST.
CAPE
CANAVERAL, Fla. - NASA delayed the launch of the shuttle Atlantis to no earlier
than January early Sunday after faulty fuel tank sensors foiled the planned
space shot for the second time in less than a week.
The failure
of one of four fuel gauge-like sensors at the bottom of Atlantis' 15-story
external tank during a preflight test prevented the shuttle from an
afternoon launch here at NASA's Kennedy Space Center spaceport.
"Confirmation,
now, we have scrubbed for today," said NASA commentator George Diller after
mission managers called off the launch attempt at 7:24 a.m. EST (1224 GMT).
After
scrubbing the launch, mission managers met to weigh options for Atlantis' space
station construction flight and made an early decision to push the mission to
no earlier than Jan. 2.
"That will be our next
opportunity," NASA spokesperson Allard Beutel told reporters here at the Kennedy Space Center. "We're going to stand down for a couple of weeks and try to figure
out this problem."
Recurring problem
NASA was
counting down toward a 3:20 p.m. EST (2020 GMT) launch to begin its fourth
construction flight to the International Space Station (ISS) this year. The
mission had been delayed
since Thursday after two of the same four engine
cut-off sensors failed a standard countdown test. A third sensor
also gave false readings once the tank was drained.
The sensors
act as fuel gauges and are designed to shut down a shuttle's three main engines
before its external tank runs dry. Intermittent malfunctions with the system
have plagued NASA since 2005, when the agency resumed shuttle flights following
the Columbia tragedy.
While
previous NASA flight rules required three of the four sensors to work properly
for launch, mission managers imposed a stricter rule calling for all four to
perform nominally for today's attempted liftoff. They also curtailed Atlantis'
five-minute launch window to just one minute in order to conserve fuel and
ensure the shuttle's fuel tank has enough propellant to reach orbit should the
sensors fail during liftoff.
In the
early stages of fueling Atlantis' external tank with the more than 500,000
gallons (1.9 million liters) of super-chilled liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen
propellant required for launch, all four sensors performed as designed. An
initial check found them to be working properly and prompted a "brief burst of
elation" that soon evaporated when a sensor failed a subsequent test.
"Of course,
in the firing room, we were very excited and felt like we had a good system and
were getting ready to go fly today," Doug Lyons, NASA's STS-122 launch
director, after the scrub.
That
excitement, he added, faded minutes later when one of the sensors failed the
same test.
Troubleshooting
ahead
NASA
shuttle program manager Wayne Hale said Saturday that if a fuel sensor glitch
prevented a launch attempt today, any troubleshooting efforts could potentially
hinder Atlantis from launching before year's end.
"Probably,
it would reduce our chances of launching in the December window substantially,"
Hale said.
Lyons said shuttle engineers have a
series of options in order to respond to Atlantis' fuel sensor woes. They would
perform troubleshooting efforts at the shuttle's launch pad, and may even be
able to replace the sensors there, before resorting to rolling the orbiter back
into its protective Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB), he said.
"There's a
great deal of troubleshooting we could do at the pad, and that...would be our
first course of action," Lyons said Saturday. "We'd exhaust all those efforts,
I think, before we'd even entertain going back to the VAB."
Commanded
by veteran shuttle flyer Stephen Frick, Atlantis's planned 11-day mission will
deliver the European Space Agency's Columbus
laboratory to the ISS and swap out one member of the outpost's
three-astronaut crew. At least three spacewalks are planned during the mission
to install Columbus and upgrade the ISS.
Slated to
launch spaceward aboard Atlantis with Frick are STS-122 pilot Alan Poindexter, mission
specialists Rex Walheim, Leland Melvin, Stanley Love and European Space Agency
astronauts Hans Schlegel and Leopold Eyharts.
NASA had a
slim window that closes on Thursday, with a possible one-day extension, in
which to launch Atlantis before sun angles become unfavorable. With dwindling
launch opportunities and a sensor glitch that remains unexplained, mission
managers decided to delay the flight until early 2008 and hunt down the glitch.
"Our goal
is to fly in space and do it safely and successfully," Hale said Saturday.
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