NASA tested controls in Discovery’s external fuel tank for a second time last Friday in preparation for the first shuttle launch since the fatal breakup of Columbia in 2003.
“Everything went without a hitch this time,” said space shuttle program manager Bill Parsons. “Nothing we saw today should prevent a launch July 13.”
A valve and a sensor that acts as a fuel gauge failed in tests on April 14, NASA said, in preparation for the mid-July blastoff, the first day in a launch window.
At the end of April, NASA delayed its mid-May scheduled launch by two months, to address a possibility that ice, formed from humid Florida air on the super-chilled tanks, would break free of the external fuel tank during launch and damage the thermal skin of the shuttle.
The earlier test however had not determined the origin of the equipment malfunction.
“At this point, the conclusion that you might come to is that we had some kind of connection that wasn’t exactly right … and therefore we’ve cleared this up,” Parsons said.
NASA engineers remember all too well that it was a piece of insulating foam that broke loose at Columbia’s launch, striking the shuttle and damaging its heat shield, ultimately provoking the tragedy.
Damage to the heat shield allowed superheated gasses to enter a wing of the space shuttle on February 1, 2003 as the vehicle re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere, setting it alight and causing the Columbia to break up above the southwestern United States.
All seven astronauts on board were killed.
The Discovery’s enormous tank was filled with nearly two million liters (530,000 gallons) of liquid hydrogen and oxygen over an 11-hour period during a simulated countdown, spokesman for the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral Bruce Buckingham said.
On Monday, Discovery is scheduled to undergo hot-fire tests of auxiliary power units, according to the NASA statement.
