NASA Delays Discovery's Final Launch To February

Posted by Soulskill on Friday December 3, 2010 @07:36AM from the hope-you-brought-a-blanket,-keith dept.

Velcroman1 writes "NASA has postponed the launch of space shuttle Discovery's final mission to no earlier than early February — the latest in a long string of delays that have kept the spacecraft grounded for more than a month. Discovery is now slated to launch no earlier than Feb. 3, with the delay allowing NASA engineers more time to analyze why small cracks developed in the shuttle's huge external fuel tank. The cracks have since been repaired, but NASA wants to make sure similar issues don't pose a future concern."

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Re:Dec 17 launch was stupid anyways by SmilingBoy · 2010-12-03 10:24 · Score: 3, Informative

No, it is true - they normally don't fly over new year's eve. In a press conference they mentioned that they could reconfigure the computer systems on a quiet day in orbit to deal with it but that it still entails some risk.