spacetoday.net: STS-119 launch postponed

Posted: Wed, Mar 11, 2009, 8:59 PM ET (0059 GMT)

Wednesday's scheduled launch of the space shuttle Discovery was scrubbed several hours before liftoff because of a hydrogen leak, pushing the launch back to no earlier than Sunday. During fueling of the shuttle's external tank engineers detected a leak associated with a gaseous hydrogen venting system. Because of the work needed to repair the problem, the launch has been pushed back to no earlier than March 15 at 7:43 pm EDT (2343 GMT). Work on the repair, and thus the ability to meet that Sunday launch date, will be reviewed Thursday afternoon. NASA has until no later than Tuesday to launch the shuttle before standing down until early April, to avoid conflicts with a Soyuz mission to the station planned for late March.