spacetoday.net: NASA ready for Tuesday shuttle launch attempt

Posted: Mon, Jul 25, 2005, 1:47 PM ET (1747 GMT)
STS-114: logo (NASA)

NASA shuttle managers gave their approve late Sunday for Tuesday morning's launch of Discovery on the first post-Columbia mission, despite the lack of a resolution for a fuel sensor problem. Discovery is scheduled to lift off on mission STS-114 at 10:39 am EDT (1439 GMT) Tuesday. Managers cleared the shuttle for launch even though they do not yet fully understand what caused a fuel sensor to malfunction during preparations for a July 13 launch. That problem caused NASA to scrub the launch while engineers tried to understand the cause of the glitch. Managers said they would be willing to launch even if the sensor malfunctions again, provided they understand the situation. No other technical problems have been reported with the countdown, although weather could become an issue: forecasts call for only a 60 percent chance of acceptable weather at launch time Tuesday.