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Faulty fuel gauge halts first Shuttle flight since disaster

Rupert Cornwell
Thursday 14 July 2005 00:40 BST
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Wayne Hale, Nasa's deputy shuttle program manager, said: "We came out here all set to go today, we've been working really hard to be ready to go and we incurred a problem. It took us about five minutes of discussion to confirm that and decide that it was time to try another day."

It is the second time in three months that the same problem has cropped up with the Discovery shuttle. Nasa technicians thought they had resolved what they described as an "unexplained anomaly" by replacing cables and electronic equipment aboard the spacecraft - but to no avail.

Nasa has until the end of July to launch Discovery. Thereafter it would have to wait until September. This reflects both the position of the international space station with which the shuttle will link up and Nasa's desire for a daylight liftoff, in order to photograph the shuttle as it climbed to orbit.

The announcement came when the seven astronauts had almost completed boarding, and when the only threat to the launch was bad weather reported in the area around the Space Centre on Florida's Atlantic coast. By a twist of fate, the skies were clear at the originally scheduled launch time of 3.51pm.

Nasa officials said the problem lay with one of the four engine fuel sensors, which make sure the shuttle's main engines shut down at the proper point during the ascent. A launch could end in tragedy if a faulty sensor cut out one of the engines too early or too late.

The faulty sensor was showing a low fuel level, even though the tank was full with 535,000 gallons of super-cold liquid hydrogen and oxygen. "For some reason, the sensors did not behave today and so we're going to have to scrub this launch attempt," Mike Leinbach, the launch director, said.

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