United Space Alliance Engineers are still searching for reasons relating to the Engine Cut Out (ECO) fault that cause the scrub of last Wednesday\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s launch of Shuttle Discovery. <\/p>\n
With a launch date now set for \u2018no sooner than\u2019 the end of next week, engineers are deep into the troubleshooting phase \u2013 with no cause yet found on why the LH2 ECO (number 2) failed to work properly. Discovery\u2019s launch date will be decided from the point the fault is either found and corrected, or when NASA managers decide on a possible reduction in the launch requirement of having all four ECO sensors in full working order. Discovery will take four days to ready to launch following that point in time. <\/font><\/font><\/p>\n Should the ECO sensors be at fault and require work or replacement, Discovery will have to be rolled back \u2013 once again \u2013 most likely ending the opportunity to launch in July. The next launch window opens in September. <\/font><\/p>\n Meanwhile, NASA managers have come under fire from a former engineer who helped build Shuttle Columbia. <\/font><\/p>\n \u201cAny engineer will tell you that you can\u2019t beat a good test,\u201d said Randy Avera, when talking about the ECO fault and the lack of a third Tanking Test. \u201cNASA should have tested that.\u201d<\/font><\/p>\n However, on passing Avera\u2019s quotes on to a current United Space Alliance External Tank engineer \u2013 who asked not to be named \u2013 his comments were shot down.<\/font><\/p>\n \u201cSome people should learn to keep their comments to themselves,\u201d he noted. \u201cWe thought we had solved the ECO issue given the lack of any problem on Tanking Test 2. If we tested everything as much as some people are calling for, we\u2019d never launch.\u201d <\/p>\n NASA manager Wayne Hale set to hold a press conference on Monday to update the current status of troubleshooting and options to proceed to another launch attempt of Discovery.<\/font><\/p>\n Space Shuttle (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s possible that we could be back in the countdown and looking at a launch in the latter half of the [next] week,\u201d said Hale a few days ago. \u201cBut that would require a very near-term lucky find.<\/p>\n \u201cAs we move into more detailed testing, we obviously are moving into fixes that might take longer. But we are not..becoming pessimistic about making the July launch window.\u201d<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" United Space Alliance Engineers are still searching for reasons relating to the Engine Cut Out (ECO) fault that cause the scrub of last Wednesday\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s launch of Shuttle Discovery. With a launch date now set for \u2018no sooner than\u2019 the end of next week, engineers are deep into the troubleshooting phase \u2013 with no cause yet […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42346","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42346"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42346"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42346\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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