Endeavour Delayed - Expected To Be Launched On Monday

Recently “Endeavour” is in news for its delay. With everyone keeping their fingers crossed, no one wants to take any chance which would hamper its successful launch.  That is why it is thoroughly scrutinized and it is cleared of all loop holes, if any. Well to say in other words,   “Endeavour”, the recent endeavor of man in universe, was delayed due to some technical reasons. It was just 3-3.5 hours before the launch when the managers called it off. The weather is concern for any flight, anytime, but this was hardly a matter this time. The real reason was technical.

#-Link-Snipped-#The spacecraft has three “Auxiliary power units” also abbreviated as APU. The system for its smooth functioning requires that all three APUs operate simultaneously. This was not happening with two of them. That is why the mission was delayed for about three days. The problem will take some two to three days to get rectified. The engineers at a first glance thought that the issue was pretty simple but it was actually complicated. NASA spokesperson Mike Curie said, ”They typically look at things as a one or two day slip and, in this case, as they looked at it further they determined that it was going to take longer to resolve so they went ahead and decided it was going to take at least 72 hours.”

He further added,” When in space, the shuttle is controlled by the thrusters, the jets that maneuver it around, so the APUs are turned off, however the hydrazine is still in the lines and the shuttle is subject to temperatures that drop as low as 250 degrees below zero when it is on the dark side of the earth. The hydrazine would freeze without these heaters and if the hydrazine freezes, the APUs would not work correctly for landing.”

To rectify the heater and make it work smoothly, it would take spraying Helium. This would make the faulty area ‘inert’. It would then be possible to correct the problem easily. However there is also a chance that the launch will be postponed for another week, in case the problem is associated with control systems.

This time the launch will be scheduled on coming Monday 2:33 EDT. It must be noted that, the space craft contains a device called “Alpha magnetic spectrometer-2” (#-Link-Snipped-#), which is expected to contribute immensely to increase the limited knowledge of humans as far as the field of Dark matter is concerned. #-Link-Snipped-# is a multimillion dollars experiment, aimed at providing the scientists with spectacular data by capturing cosmic radiations. #-Link-Snipped-##-Link-Snipped-# Image Credit: Examiner