Live At KSC: NASA Cautiously Optimistic On Launch

NASA engineers are preparing to start fuel-loading operations at Kennedy Space Center today as senior managers review data from launch-pad lightning strikes that could have damaged electrical systems on shuttle Endeavour.

A day after the lightning strike analyses prompted a launch scrub, NASA officials say they are cautiously optimistic all shuttle systems will check out and engineers will be given a go to proceed toward a targeted 7:13 p.m. liftoff.

Members of an engineering review team told managers earlier this hour that electrical systems on the shuttle's solid rocket boosters had been checked out and there were no apparent problems. Shuttle orbiter systems still must be cleared.

NASA managers and engineers wanted to make certain the pyrotechnic devices that are used to separate the shuttle's two 149-foot solid rocket boosters from its external tank will operate as intended during flight.

Also a concern were the pyrotechnic devices that would enable range safety officers to deliberately destroy the boosters if they careened out of control and threatened populated towns surrounding NASA's shuttle homeport.

Mike Moses, chairman of NASA's Mission Management Team, told managers and engineers that if additional time was required to complete the review of the analyses that NASA could delay the planned 9:48 a.m. start-up of external tank fueling.

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NASA scrapped a launch attempt Saturday to give engineers more time to complete an analysis of potential shuttle electrical system damage that might have been done by 11 bolts of lightning that struck within 1,800 feet of Endeavour during a severe thunderstorm Friday afternoon.

The spaceship itself was not struck. But seven of the bolts hit the lightning masts that tops the 36-story launch tower at pad 39A, and two of those strikes created enough voltage to trigger an exhaustive analysis of shuttle systems.