The 39th and final adventure of the Discovery space shuttle has been postponed to early February next year to give its team of engineers more leeway.
Cape Canaveral engineering staff is hard at work trying to uncover the mystery of the disturbing cracks that have appeared on the Discovery’s 15-story high external tank. The Japanese cargo carrier is being planned for relocation from its original docking port to another on the US side of the International Space Station in order to give way for the Discovery and its team. With the move on its way, the Discovery has been previously given the opportunity to launch early in the month of February. The next available time for it to launch shall be in late February if things do not work out with the engineers who are hard at work trying to solve the puzzling cracks that appeared on the Discovery’s enormous external tank. Meanwhile, the Endeavor space shuttle’s planned launch on the 27th of February has been postponed as well to almost two months later, along with its mission to carry a team of physicists working on a large particle experiment.Meanwhile, legislators have approved one more shuttle flight to the International Space Station.

Funding for the mission, however, is yet to be granted by Congress to NASA, with the target date of launch set for the 28th of June. NASA had been planning to launch shuttles between the 17th and 20th of this month. However, fleet managers say that the December window will not give enough time for NASA engineers to discover and solve the perplexing cracks that have been found on the Discovery’s external tank.