There's a problem with Columbia, which may force it to return home early tomorrow morning, and cancel its planned refit of the Hubble Telescope. On Columbia and all space shuttles, there are 2 coolant lines/loops which are crucial for cooling during reentry, one of those coolant lines has a partial and possible full failure, these lines carry away heat generated by the Columbia's electronics systems. A Mission Management meeting will meet at 5 PM today and make a decision whether or not to keep Columbia aloft, flight rules dictate a return to earth as soon as possible in the case one of the coolant lines has failed... So this mission may be a bust :( But then again NASA would like to keep it up if they can, I'm sure they're crunching all sorts of numbers now... I guess we'll know soon what will happen... Regards, Ted A. Nichols II ----------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe from SeeSat-L by sending a message with 'unsubscribe' in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@lists.satellite.eu.org http://www.satellite.eu.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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