The NASA official who presided over Columbia's doomed re-entry -- and who will make the final call about whether Discovery should launch today -- said he is confident this will be a safe flight despite lingering questions about wing imperfections.
Shuttle launch manager LeRoy Cain said on Sunday that he would delay the space station construction mission if he thought Discovery's wings would not hold up during its return from orbit. A hole in one of Columbia's wings led to its destruction four-and-a-half years ago; Cain was the flight director on duty at Mission Control.
"We have not cut any corners here. We've reviewed the data in detail," Cain said at a news conference.
Meteorologists said rain and possibly thunderstorms could delay the launch. The odds of acceptable weather for the late morning launch was 60 percent.
Half of the engineers who participated in Discovery's flight readiness review this past week favored a launch delay to allow further tests and possible replacement of three suspect wing panels. Senior managers opted to press ahead, saying they were not convinced repairs were needed.
A new inspection method uncovered what could be cracks just beneath the protective coating on these three wing panels. It's unknown whether the cracks, if they are there, might worsen and cause the coating to chip off, making the area more vulnerable to the 1,650oC heat of re-entry.
No one knows what could be causing cracks.
Cain said all 44 of the reinforced carbon panels that form the leading edge of Discovery's wings may have some similar flaw, along with the wing panels on NASA's two other shuttles. The as-yet-unanswered question, he said, is how bad the degradation needs to be in order to take action.
"We believe, to the best of our ability to know today, that this risk is certainly lower than some of the more significant risks that we take because of the inherent nature of this vehicle when we go fly," he said.
Discovery's astronauts will use an inspection boom in orbit to check each wing panel, especially the three in question. The equipment can detect whether any coating is missing, but is not sensitive enough to spot underlying cracks, Cain said.
Kouri Richins, a Utah mother who published a children’s book about grief after the death of her husband is to serve a life sentence for his murder without the possibility of parole, a judge ruled on Wednesday. Richins was convicted in March of aggravated murder for lacing a cocktail given to her husband, Eric Richins, with five times the lethal dose of fentanyl at their home near Park City in 2022. A jury also found her guilty of four other felonies, including insurance fraud, forgery and attempted murder for trying to poison her husband weeks earlier on Feb. 14, 2022, with a
‘GROSS NEGLIGENCE?’ Despite a spleen typically being significantly smaller than a liver, the surgeon said he believed Bryan’s spleen was ‘double the size of what is normal’ A Florida surgeon who is facing criminal charges after allegedly removing a patient’s liver instead of his spleen has said he is “forever traumatized” by that person’s death. In a deposition from November last year that was recently obtained by NBC, 44-year-old Thomas Shaknovsky described the death of 70-year-old William Bryan as an “incredibly unfortunate event that I regret deeply.” Bryan died after the botched surgery; and last month, a grand jury in Tallahassee indicted Shaknovsky on a charge of manslaughter. “I’m forever traumatized by it and hurt by it,” Shaknovsky added, also saying that wrong-site surgeries can happen “during
‘PERSONAL MISTAKES’: Eileen Wang has agreed to plead guilty to the felony, which comes with a maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison A southern California mayor has agreed to plead guilty to acting as an illegal agent for the Chinese government and has resigned from her city position, officials said on Monday. Eileen Wang (王愛琳), mayor of Arcadia, was charged last month with one count of acting in the US as an illegal agent of a foreign government. She was accused of doing the bidding of Chinese officials, such as sharing articles favorable to Beijing, without prior notification to the US government as required by law. The 58-year-old was elected in November 2022 to a five-person city council, from which the mayor is selected
DELA ROSA CASE: The whereabouts of the senator, who is wanted by the ICC, was unclear, while President Marcos faces a political test over the senate situation Philippine authorities yesterday were seeking confirmation of reports that a top politician wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) had fled, a day after gunfire rang out at the Philippine Senate where he had taken refuge fearing his arrest. Senator Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa, the former national police chief and top enforcer of former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte’s “war on drugs,” has been under Senate protection and is wanted for crimes against humanity, the same charges Duterte is accused of. “Several sources confirmed that the senator, Senator Bato, is no longer in the Senate premises, but we are still getting confirmation,” Presidential
RSS