Discovery Launch a No-Go, Again

An anonymous reader writes with an excerpt from Tech Fragments that says "NASA has yet again postponed the launch of Space Shuttle Discovery, which was due to launch today, because of a hydrogen leak in the vent line between the external fuel tank and main engines. The vent line is at the intertank region of the external tank and is the overboard vent to the pad and the flare stack where the vented hydrogen is burned off. ... The NASA launch team is resetting to preserve the option of attempting a Thursday night liftoff at 8:54 p.m. EDT depending on what repairs are needed and what managers decide. The Mission Management Team is meeting at 5 p.m. today to discuss the issue." You can watch for updates on NASA's Space Shuttle page, too.

Comments

Good News for People on the East Coast

[longacre]

The shuttle is set to take an unusual course nearly parallel with the east coast for this mission, which will be visible to nearly everyone from Florida to New York. The weather is a bit cloudy today, but should be perfectly clear Thursday night.

"again"?

[Cally]

This is the first scrub of STS-119 since the T-44 countdown start. Colour me pedantic and all but... *shrug*

It sounds to me like they're expecting to have to pull down the stack to fix this, though the clock's theoretically only reset to T+24 in case they decide it's OK to fly with this issue, in which case we'll see the next launch attempt at 01:20 UTC plus a bit tomorrow night, when the ISS orbit's next sync'd with Florida.