NASA Scrubs Space Shuttle Endeavour Launch Again

NASA has yet again postponed the Space Shuttle Endeavour launch on Wednesday after crews admitted to not having properly fixed the hydrogen leak that appeared on Saturday. The STS-127 Mission to the International Space Station will now be attempted on July 11, 2009.

The gaseous hydrogen leak, which had been detected on the previous launch attempt and now again, was found at the Ground Umbilical Carrier Plate (GUCP). This is the same location where the leak was which resulted in a scrub launch on June 13th.

"We're going to step back and figure out what the problem is and go fix it," said Deputy Space Shuttle Program Manager LeRoy Cain during a briefing afterward. "Once we get it fixed and we're confident that we have a solution that's going to work and allow us to go fly safely, then we'll proceed forward."

Space Shuttle Discovery had a similar leak which resulted in a scrubbed launch in March and a seal replacement resulted in being the correct fix for the problem. NASA teams performed the same fix to correct the Endeavour's issue but it would seem as though the fix didn't help in this situation.

Apparently Endeavour's vent lines passed all leak checks but as the initial stages of fueling occurred, NASA engineers found a small leak rate.

At 1:55 AM EDT the launch director officially scrubbed the launch.

"We are scrubbing the launch attempt for today," said launch commentator Mike Curie. "The troubleshooting efforts have not resulted in a significant decrease in the amount of gaseous hydrogen that's being detected outside of the ground umbilical carrier plate, the same area where we experienced a leak the last launch attempt."