Thread: Next Shuttle Launch NET Mar 4, 1006

NASA 's press briefing is still in progress, but this news is out.
NET is No Earlier Than.

More details to come.

Thanks MC!!!

If they delay it a month.......and it easily could..........I could possibly be seeing a launch before my cruise..........not that would be exciting.

In order to be comfortable about the foam problem found on the last flight, NASA Management decided not to take advantage of the last launch opportunity available for this year, that would allow a daytime launch and still rendezvous with the Space Station. While the problem being worked had no impact on this last flight, it would be inappropriate to ignore it in light of what we now know from the Columbia accident.

As Jim alluded to in his post, Mar 4 is only a planning date. So YES, a delay until April is possible. I'll have to check what the launch opportunites for next year are, and see if April is included.
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No shuttle launch before March, NASA says

Thu Aug 18, 2005 1:13 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The next launch of a space shuttle will not be until March 2006, NASA officials said on Thursday.

"It looked like the early opportunities don't work for us," Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA's associate administrator for Space Operations, told a news conference. "From an overall standpoint we think really March 4th is the time frame we are looking at."

The U.S. space agency is still trying to determine why a large piece of foam broke off the shuttle Discovery's fuel tank during launch last month, Gerstenmaier said.

Gerstenmaier, newly appointed to direct NASA's return to human space flight, said March 4 was not a hard launch date but a planning target. He said it might allow a more efficient use of the shuttles Atlantis and Discovery in servicing the International Space Station.



NASA Administrator Michael Griffin said the space agency was taking a careful approach. "There is a change in thinking. I have changed the game on shuttle thinking," Griffin told the news conference. We are not trying to get a specific number of flights out of the shuttle system."

We should go back to the moon .