Technicians and engineers at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida are narrowing in on the likely source of what caused heaters on a fuel line for space shuttle Endeavour’s auxiliary power unit-1 (APU-1) to fail on Friday and scrubbing the first launch attempt for the STS-134 mission. But because of work associated with fixing the problem, launch teams will not be able to make a launch attempt tomorrow. Teams will meet Monday and are expected to determine a new “no earlier than” next launch attempt for Endeavour at that time.<\/p>\n
Technicians began testing systems associated with the heaters yesterday afternoon and into the overnight hours. Test results indicate the problem is with a power control box, the aft load control assembly-2 (ALCA-2) in Endeavour’s aft compartment. Teams are working on plans to replace the box or any faulty associated hardware. The launch team currently is backing out of launch countdown operations.<\/p>\n
There still are numerous factor to be worked out, but just based on the amount of time needed to do the fix, a new launch attempt wouldn’t happen before the end of the week, at the soonest.<\/p>\n
Endeavour’s six astronauts are heading back to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston for a few days of additional training before they return for the next launch attempt. The crew’s families also are going to return home today.<\/p>\n
NASA Managers will hold a news conference update briefing on NASA TV at 2 p.m. EDT.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Technicians and engineers at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida are narrowing in on the likely source of what caused heaters on a fuel line for space shuttle Endeavour’s auxiliary power unit-1 (APU-1) to fail on Friday and scrubbing the first launch attempt for the STS-134 mission. But because of work associated with fixing the problem, launch teams will not be able to make a launch attempt tomorrow. Teams will meet Monday and are expected to determine a new “no earlier than” next launch attempt for Endeavour at that time.<\/p>\n
Technicians began testing systems associated with the heaters yesterday afternoon and into the overnight hours. Test results indicate the problem is with a power control box, the aft load control assembly-2 (ALCA-2) in Endeavour’s aft compartment. Teams are working on plans to replace the box or any faulty associated hardware. The launch team currently is backing out of launch countdown operations.<\/p>\n
There still are numerous factor to be worked out, but just based on the amount of time needed to do the fix, a new launch attempt wouldn’t happen before the end of the week, at the soonest.<\/p>\n
Endeavour’s six astronauts are heading back to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston for a few days of additional training before they return for the next launch attempt. The crew’s families also are going to return home today.<\/p>\n
NASA Managers will hold a news conference update briefing on NASA TV at 2 p.m. EDT.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":612598,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-93652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-shuttle-update"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93652","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=93652"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93652\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":93653,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93652\/revisions\/93653"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/612598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=93652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=93652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=93652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}