Continuing delays in the launch of the space shuttle Endeavour caused NASA managers Monday to slip the scheduled launch of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter moon-mapping mission by a day, to no earlier than Thursday.
The shuttle’s launch, originally planned for Saturday at Cape Canaveral in Florida, was delayed by a leak in the hydrogen-venting system on the shuttle’s giant external fuel tank, said officials at NASA.
The mission, which will continue construction of the International Space Station’s Japanese laboratory, known as Kibo, has been rescheduled for a Wednesday morning launch.
Launch of the orbiter together with its companion, the Lunar Crater Observing and Sensing Satellite, had to be bumped back a day to Thursday because the mission is launching from the same complex as the space shuttle, mission managers said at a news briefing at Kennedy Space Center.
The moon mission’s launch window extends through Saturday.
If it can’t launch by then, the changing alignments of the sun, moon and Earth will force an additional delay until June 30.
The combination orbiter and satellite mission is the first step toward returning human beings to the surface of the moon by 2020.
The orbiter will map the moon in more detail than has been attempted, searching out the safest and most advantageous sites for a future lunar colony.
The sensing satellite, meanwhile, has only one purpose, to search for ice in perpetually shadowed craters.
To do this, the satellite will send its rocket into a crater at the South Pole.
The crash should send debris and, it is hoped, ice, as much as 6 miles above the lunar surface.
