Pingie: HTTP:: Discovery Launch Delayed by Bad Weather

HTTP:: Discovery Launch Delayed by Bad Weather
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Despite the forecast showing 80 percent chances of good weather for Tuesday morning, Mother Nature played a bad joke on NASA mission controllers and the seven-astronaut crew preparing to board space shuttle Discovery for the STS-128 assembly flight to the International Space Station (ISS). In the wee hours of the morning, rain fell on Launch Pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC), in Cape Canaveral, Florida, breaching the ten-mile radius around the launch site, which is necessary if mission controllers are to authorize a shuttle flight. The take-off has been scrubbed for today, with Discovery scheduled to make another attempt on Wednesday morning, at 1:10 am EDT (0510 GMT), the BBC News reports. According to eyewitnesses, lightning strikes fell within only a few miles of the launch pad, which prompted controllers and NASA officials to abort the launch sequence just minutes before the scheduled take-off time. The delay couldn't have come at a worse time, after the spac!
e agency just narrowly allowed the shuttle to fly today, after concerns that its foam insulation, located on the external tanks, might fall during this mission as well and strike the shuttle's sensitive heat shield tiles. Once in orbit, there is little astronauts can do to repair them, although basic tools became available to shuttles after th...
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