ROANOKE TIMES 

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, July 26, 1990                   TAG: 9007260260
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE: CAPE CANAVERAL, FLA.                                LENGTH: Short

LEAK DELAYS LAUNCH PLANS FOR SHUTTLE

NASA's last-ditch effort to fix Atlantis' hydrogen leak on the launch pad failed Wednesday, forcing the trouble-plagued agency to postpone the space shuttle's flight until later this year.

NASA engineers, who had hoped to avoid a long launch delay by quickly repairing the leak on the pad, said the shuttle must be returned to the hangar for more work. It had been scheduled for a secret military mission this month.

Shuttle Columbia, still under repairs because of a different sort of hydrogen leak which scrubbed a May launch, is scheduled for an astronomy mission in early September. NASA says it expects the leak to be fixed in time.

The developments came as a space agency team began probing the cause of another publicized problem: the flawed mirror on the $1.5 billion Hubble Space Telescope.

The seven-member team took testimony in secret Wednesday at Hughes-Danbury Optical Systems Inc., the maker of the mirror.

NASA, facing mounting criticism in Congress because of the string of setbacks, got one piece of good news Wednesday: A thrice-delayed Atlas rocket launch finally went off without a flaw.

The rocket carried a government device designed to study electric fields in space and the Van Allen radiation fields. The Atlas launch had been delayed because of a power problem, bad weather and a helium leak. - Associated Press 


 by CNB