Wednesday, March 11, 2009

STS-119 Now No Earlier Than Sunday

Following the meeting mentioned in the last post, the STS-119 launch to the space station has been postponed until this Sunday at the earliest.

A Sunday launch would be at 7:43 PM EDT, with the usual launch window of around 7 minutes to achieve proper orbit to reach the ISS. However, this remains contingent on exactly how much work will be required to fix the problem with the gaseous hydrogen vent line.

Another meeting will take place tomorrow to assess how well troubleshooting is going, then a firmer decision will be made.