Cold Snap Could Delay Next NASA Shuttle Launch

The unusual and lengthy cold snap on Florida's Space Coast is once again pushing back Discovery's move to the Kennedy Space Center Vehicle Assembly Building and its launch might slip from a March 18 target into early April to avoid conflict an already scheduled crew rotation at the International Space Station.

NASA shuttle program managers will meet this coming week to evaluate the situation, and it's likely that a new target date for the STS-131 mission will be selected. That date likely will be after the planned April 4 arrival at the station of the Expedition 23 crew, which includes Russian cosmonauts Alexander Skvortson and Mikhail Kornienko and U.S. astronaut Tracy Caldwell Dyson. Current station commander Jeffrey Williams and flight engineers Max Suraev are scheduled to depart the outpost on March 18, and the new crew is slated to launch April 2 at Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

NASA had planned to move Discovery out of Orbiter Processing Facility Bay No. 3 on Feb. 11, but the cold weather at KSC prompted a postponement until today. Launch managers determine the weather still is too cold to make the move, and conditions are expected to remain the same throughput the week.

The shuttle's 44 nose-and-tail steering jets and its twin maneuvering engines are susceptible to toxic propellant leaks if conditions are too cold. The temperatures must be above 45 degrees in the shuttle's high bay in the Vehicle Assembly Building, which is not heated. No warm air purge can be kept on the orbiter's Reaction Control System or its Orbital Maneuvering System in the 52-story assembly building. Temperatures in the high bay always as well under the ambient temperatures outside the building during the type of lengthy cold snaps NASA has encountered during both January and February.

ABOUT THE IMAGES: Click to enlarge the NASA images of the STS-131 crew (top) and the Soyuz crew flying to the station in early April. The shuttle crew includes (left to right) mission specialists Rick Mastracchio and Stephanie Wilson, pilot James Dutton, mission specialist Dorothy Metcalf-Lindenburger, mission commander Alan Poindexter, mission specialist Naoko Yamazaki of Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and mission specialist Clay Anderson. The Soyuz crew includes (left to right) Russian cosmonauts Mikhail Kornienko and Alexander Skvortsov and U.S. astronaut Tracy Caldwell Dyson.