In a spectacular midnight launch, space shuttle Discovery finally launched last night after a four-day delay caused by bad weather and a pair of consecutive concerns about a hydrogen valve.

Discover, under the command of Rick Sturckow and piloted by Kevin Ford provided spectators with a spectacular show, leaving the launchpad at almost exactly midnight and achieving orbit about 8 minutes later. This current task at hand is a 13-day mission to deliver 7.5 tons of supplies and equipment to the International Space Station.

The major portion of the four-day delay was primarily due to problems with an eight-inch hydrogen valve in the shuttle compartment which is involved in the fueling process. The valve continues to show a problem despite repeated testing over a two-day period. Although it continued to indicate a fault, it also proved to operate normal when tested. In the event, at launch, the valve performed flawlessly. The weather delay was due to clouds and threatening storms to the south which finally cleared closer to the delayed launch window.

So far, analysis of the tapes from the video cameras mounted to watch for insulation falling from the shuttle’s main tank has revealed no problems on this flight. There was concern because of the large amount of foam which fell and impacted the heat shield on the last shuttle mission. That is good news, although the crew will closely check for damage as a normal part of shuttle operations to insure that there was no damage that the cameras missed, according to a CNET story.

This is the first of seven shuttle missions that are devoted to finishing the construction of the International Space Station, and are the final seven missions planned for the space shuttle, after which the remains of the fleet will be retired. All the remaining flights have mission components from non-U.S. Space agencies. The profile for this mission is typical of the remaining seven.

As an example, European Space Agency astronaut Christer Fuglesang, who is making his second shuttle flight, said “We’re bringing up seven racks that will be transferred to the space station. Three of them are really to keep the station’s six crew members well and alive. There’s a crew quarters, a treadmill–you have to exercise twice a day if you stay in space up to six months–and then there’s a system to keep the air clean. Then we’re bringing up three racks dedicated to science. And of course, there’s a lot of food and other things.”

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Entry was posted on Saturday, August 29th, 2009 at 2:31 pm under Science and technology, Technology.

Read more entries by Michael W. Jones.
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