fuel tank sensor that misreads and a robotic
arm that was dinged - that could potentially delay its planned launch in May.
No decision has been made
on whether those predicaments will push back the launch of the second shuttle mission since the doomed Columbia flight in
2003, NASA spokesman Kyle Herring said Tuesday.
But last week, NASA
officials said that sticking to a May launch
schedule provided little time to fix any major technical problems. Space
shuttle program manager Wayne Hale plans to hear a formal presentation from
tank project managers before deciding what to do.
"The program hasn't heard
the full story,'' Herring said. "It's very premature to indicate that we're
going to do anything with this right now.''
The fuel tank problem was
discovered during testing before it was shipped to the Kennedy Space Center in
Florida last week. One of the four sensors at the bottom of the liquid hydrogen
fuel tank gave an electrical current reading that was slightly off.
The fuel sensors are used
for making sure the spacecraft's main engines shut down during the ascent when
the tank runs out of fuel. A launch could end in tragedy if the engines cut out
too early or too late.
Last year, the launch of
Discovery was delayed
because of a malfunctioning hydrogen fuel sensor. NASA never was able to
pinpoint the cause and was prepared to fly with just three of the four fuel
sensors working but the problem never resurfaced on launch day.
Options for the current
problem include flying with just three sensors working properly or swapping out
parts, although engineers hope they don't have to open up the tank.
"It's like your car,'' Herring
said. "If you open up your engine to try to find a small problem, you might
create some others.''
Discovery's robotic arm was
bumped last Saturday by a cherry-picker-type vehicle that was being used to
clean up broken glass from a light bulb whose pieces had fallen in the
shuttle's open payload bay. Engineers haven't decided whether the arm will need
to be changed out.
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