NASA to Play Safe, Replace Sluggish Valve

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — NASA officials decided today to replace a sluggish valve that caused a computer to scrub an engine test on space shuttle Discovery, a process that will delay another test attempt for nearly a week.

The swap of a new bleed valve on the engine requires about five days, but the officials decided not to set a new test date until Sunday at the earliest.

Boyce Mix, engine chief at NASA’s Mississippi propulsion facility, said, “We don’t want to establish the flight readiness firing date today. We want to see how the work goes.”

NASA had the option of fitting a new valve on the shuttle or to change software commands to accommodate the way the valve worked on Thursday’s test.

The delay makes it certain that NASA will not be able to launch Discovery on the first post-Challenger mission as planned on Sept. 29.

“NASA’s dotting every ‘I’ and crossing every ‘T’ to make sure the next shuttle flight will be as safe as possible,” Sen. Jake Garn (R-Utah) said on “CBS This Morning.”

Garn, who flew on Discovery in April, 1985, said “I think that at this point we probably are being a little bit too cautious because of all the attention.”

Hot Fire Test Necessary

A hot fire test of the three engines is necessary before NASA commits the shuttle to flight.

The test failure Thursday was the first in the series within the last two weeks. The four other failures all had to do with ground equipment that had not been used since Challenger’s fatal explosion shortly after liftoff on Jan. 28, 1986, killing seven crew members.