Cape Canaveral (FL) – NASA said that it has decided to postpone the launch of the launch of Endeavour and mission STS-127 because of “a leak associated with the gaseous hydrogen venting system”. A similar problem was found in March before the launch of Discovery, which caused a mission delay of more than a month.
NASA said that the launch, originally planned for Saturday, will be delayed for at least four days and engineers now believe the shuttle could be ready for launch this Thursday.
Very few details about the actual problem have been released. NASA simply said that the leak is “associated with the gaseous hydrogen venting system” – a system that is used to carry excess hydrogen safely away from the launch pad. An apparently similar problem was found before the launch on Discovery in March,
The 16-day mission of Endeavour will feature five spacewalks and complete construction of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Kibo laboratory. Astronauts are planned to attach a platform to the outside of the Japanese module that will allow experiments to be exposed to space.
