Live in orbit: Spacewalk bumped back

The flight plan for Discovery's mission at the International Space Station is being changed significantly.

NASA Mission Control just informed the Discovery astronauts that they WILL NOT be performing a spacewalk tomorrow. Instead, the next spacewalk is being pushed back to No Earlier Than Friday. The content of the spacewalk also is changing. The astronauts will try to repair the torn P6 solar array blanket rather than inspecting the starboard Solar Alpha Rotary Joint. The spacewalking repair work will be pushed back to Saturday if the repair plan is not ready to be executed by Friday. The exact nature of the repair plan is uncertain. A Mission Status Briefing is scheduled for 2 p.m. EDT today.

On live coverage of the briefing: NASA Administrator Michael Griffin will be testifying before the House Science Committee today, and the hearing will be broadcast on the NASA TV Public Channel. The Mission Status Briefing will be broadcast on the NASA TV Media Channel.

Consequently, we will have to temporarily change our live NASA TV feed to one that launches at the top of the page automatically as opposed to one with a static photo and link to the NASA TV viewer.

Note to Apple and dial-up users: Apple and dial-up users have reported problems with the blog when the NASA TV feed is confugured to launch automatically. Please accept our apologies in advance if you experience problems. We will return the NASA TV feed to our nominal configuration as soon as NASA switches mission coverage back to the NASA TV Public Channel.