Cape Canaveral, Fla. – NASA managers weren’t ruling out a Fourth of July launch for space shuttle Discovery today, even after inspectors found a crack in the insulating foam on its external fuel tank.
Officials said they needed more time to evaluate the problem and planned to meet again this evening to decide whether to go ahead with the launch.
The space agency’s engineers believe the crack was caused by the expanding and shrinking of the tank as it was fueled with supercold propellant, which also caused a 3-inch-long triangle-shaped piece of foam to fall off the area and land on a platform below.
The piece of foam was too small to have caused damage if it had fallen during the launch, said John Shannon, deputy manager of the shuttle program.
“What we think happened yesterday, when we had all of that rain, we had condensation,” Shannon said. “It’s very cold. It froze.” NASA technicians planned to continue loading fuel into Discovery’s power system.
“We want to make sure we understand all the considerations that caused this,” said John Chapman, shuttle tank manager.
