A couple of hours ago I read about the Discovery. The plastic cover of a window fell from the shuttle and hit a few ceramic plates on the thrusters.
It was this same kind of accident that supposedly lead to Columbia’s explosion when it reentered the atmosphere in 2003.
Okay, Columbia had it during takeoff, while Discovery had the accident today, on the eve of its launch, so in this current case it can be fixed. And Columbia has passed through a lot of modifications lately in order to increase its flight safety. But still, WTF.
It looks like if NASA does not launch Discovery in the next few weeks, then it will have to delay until Sept. 9, when the ISS comes into the right position for a shuttle rendezvous.
The guys (John and Sergei) on the space station should be okay for a while, since they got some supplies delivered by Progress cargo ship last month.
BTW, this week is very special in space flight history -
30th Anniversary of the successful Soyuz/Apollo docking.
The window cover damaging the tiles didn’t delay the launch, it required a minor repair. They didn’t launch because one of four low fuel sensors wasn’t working, and apparently they’re still tracing the cause of that problem.
