Jul 3 1984
From The Space Library
July 3-11: Workers replaced one of the Space Shuttle Discovery's three engines as NASA reported that loose insulation on a super-cooled fuel line may have been a factor in the aborted liftoff of the Space Shuttle's maiden flight. Officials said that the faulty insulation's inability to insulate nitrogen gas from the cold may have turned the gas to liquid, and the liquid may have dripped on an engine valve, blocking it from opening.
Later, NASA announced that it was considering a plan to continue the 12th and 13th Space Shuttle missions as a way to avoid expensive delays that could push at least one mission scheduled for 1984 into 1985. The problem with combining missions was the inability to combine crews. Five crew members from the aborted flight or from the August flight would have to step down and wait for another turn. The possibility of combining missions arose when technicians at NASA's engine test facility at Bay St. Louis, Miss., were unable to duplicate the failure of Discovery's starboard engine that had aborted the flight. "No matter what we did, we were unable to duplicate the failure," a NASA source said. "And until we understand what went wrong, we don't want to fly." The failure of a rocket nozzle on a communications satellite during a test in St. Louis then further complicated NASA's rescheduling decision. A final decision awaited analysis on the test of a Star-48 solid-fuel rocket nozzle at the Astronautics Division of McDonnell Douglas Corporation in St. Louis. Star-48 rockets were on two communications satellites that would be part of the cargo on a combined mission.
On July 12 NASA announced that the next Space Shuttle flight would consist of payloads from flights 41-D and 41-F and would be launched from KSC no earlier than August 24. The mission aboard the orbiter Discovery would retain the designation 41-D. The cargo would remain essentially the same, except that the large format camera and spartan would be replaced with the Satellite Business Systems (SBS) and Telstar payloads then scheduled for launch in the same time frame. The crew for mission 41-D would be the six-member team of Commander Henry Hartsfield; pilot Michael Coats; mission specialists Judith Resnik, Steven Hawley, and Richard Mullane; and payload specialist Charles Walker. The crew of 41-F would be scheduled for a later flight. (NASA Release 84-95; W Post, July 3/84, A-12, July 10/84, A-5, July 11/84, A-6)
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