Space Shuttle Discovery looks good for a Mid-July launch

Space Shuttle Discovery looks good for a Mid-July launch

NASA representatives have said that they plan to go ahead with the launch of the shuttle on the planned mid July date in spite of the fact that they still have not found the reason for the problems they faced with the loading tests of the orbiter’s external fuel tank.

They have planned to swap the current fuel tank with a different one next week. However, they wont be doing a “tanking test” on the new tank before the launch. space shuttle program manager Bill Parsons said: “We don’t do it every time we bring out a tank. If we’re in a configuration we understand . . . we can do a tanking test when we get . . . to launch. If engineers determine there are things we need to understand, we’ll do it again.”

Reason behind this is also that if they do the tests, it would use up all the extra time they have to conduct the preparation and might delay the flight for a week. This happens to be just the latest news regarding the issues NASA is facing trying to meet the safety requirements of the commission setup after the Columbia Space Shuttle disintegrated in the space itself while coming back to earth.

NASA would be rolling back the Discovery back from the Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Pad 39B and would install a different external tank that has the bellows installed.