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Cape Canaveral FL (SPX) Mar 12, 2006 Space shuttle Discovery remains set so far for a launch around mid-May, despite a worrisome glitch in an engine-cutoff valve in its main fuel tank, and possible tile damage caused by an assembly mishap. According to NASA's latest shuttle status report, the date of Discovery's return to flight is listed as "no earlier than May 11," and mission controllers have neither canceled nor postponed that date, and they have not scheduled any special news conferences to discuss the possibility. As of last Friday, NASA said, technicians continued final closeouts on the orbiter in preparation for its roll over from Orbiter Processing Facility bay 3 to the Vehicle Assembly Building. Workers also completed checks for leaks in the liquid oxygen system on Discovery's main engines No. 2 and 3. The previous weekend, technicians inside a work platform device called a bridge bucket had bumped into Discovery's remote shuttle arm accidentally. The bucket was being used in the payload bay to clean up pieces of glass from a broken heat lamp. That accident caused pieces of glass to fall into the payload bay. NASA said initial inspections showed two indentations in the arm's outer bumper, a honeycombed structure made of epoxy designed to protect it. One of the indentations is 0.115 inches deep and 1 inch long. The second indentation is 0.035 inches deep and 0.5 inches long. Technicians completed inspections of the forward indentation were completed Thursday night, and no issues were found. The second indentation will be inspected today. Related Links Space Shuttle Kennedy Space Center NASA
NASA Successfully Completes Solid Rocket Motor Test
Huntsville AL (SPX) Mar 10, 2006NASA's Space Shuttle Program successfully fired a full-scale, full-duration reusable solid rocket technical evaluation motor Thursday, March 9, at a Utah test facility. The two-minute static, or stationary, firing of the rocket motor was performed at ATK Thiokol, a unit of Alliant Techsystems Inc., in Promontory, north of Salt Lake City.
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