Hale: shuttle foam loss may be caused by worker damage
Posted: Wed, Oct 5, 2005, 9:33 AM ET (1333 GMT)
NASA shuttle program manager Wayne Hale said Tuesday that workers may have inadvertently damaged foam on the exterior tank, causing a chunk of it to fall off during July's launch of Discovery. An in AP interview, Hale said workers may have cut or crushed foam while performing modifications to the tank prior to launch. That could have weakened the foam enough to allow it to come off during flight, although Hale said engineers are still investigating that and other possibilities, such as "normal thermal stresses", to explain the foam loss. Hale said that the recent hurricanes caused NASA to lose up to three months of work on the shuttle program, but was optimistic that the shuttle would return to flight in the spring, most likely May.
NASA shuttle program manager Wayne Hale said Tuesday that workers may have inadvertently damaged foam on the exterior tank, causing a chunk of it to fall off during July's launch of Discovery. An in AP interview, Hale said workers may have cut or crushed foam while performing modifications to the tank prior to launch. That could have weakened the foam enough to allow it to come off during flight, although Hale said engineers are still investigating that and other possibilities, such as "normal thermal stresses", to explain the foam loss. Hale said that the recent hurricanes caused NASA to lose up to three months of work on the shuttle program, but was optimistic that the shuttle would return to flight in the spring, most likely May.
Related Links:
| <<previous article | next article>> |
|
news in brief
|
|
|
|
news links
|
|
Saturday, March 14
Canada Takes Its Sovereignty Push to Space
New York Times — 9:58 am ET (1358 GMT) Eutelsat - termination of capacity contracts on Express AT1 and AT2 satellites
Eutelsat — 9:57 am ET (1357 GMT) USSPACECOM commander highlights U.S.-India space cooperation during Indo-Pacific visit
US Space Command — 9:57 am ET (1357 GMT) Firefly Aerospace: Successful Launch Validates Alpha, But The Real Test Is Cadence
SeekingAlpha — 9:56 am ET (1356 GMT) Confidential settlement for scuttled Starlink deal means Ontarians kept in dark on payout
Canadian Press — 9:53 am ET (1353 GMT) |
