Cape Canaveral – Continually worsening weather forecasts and two late-breaking technical worries created uncertainty Wednesday about the planned launch tonight of the space shuttle Discovery.
NASA meteorologists downgraded the chance for good weather at the scheduled 7:35 p.m. MST launch time to only 40 percent, with low clouds more likely than not preventing liftoff.
“The forecast has trended toward the worse,” NASA shuttle weather officer Kathy Winters said Wednesday morning.
Along with concern about the weather, engineers planned to spend much of Wednesday trying to decide whether the two technical problems – a split-second power surge Tuesday and whether glue that helps protect some of the joints in the solid-fuel rocket boosters was as strong as it should be – were minor or major.
It was too early to tell whether these would postpone Discovery’s launch, launch integration manager LeRoy Cain said.
