BREAKING NEWS: The launch has been scrubbed today due to a sensor failure: more info here. It’ll be Sunday at least before they can attempt another launch. I’ll blog about it when it happens. Stay Tuned.
Yeah, duh, like there’s other space news right now! 
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Like everyone else, I’ll be watching the launch today at 3:51 p.m. (Eastern). Every space blogger and news site has more info, so I’ll just direct you to NASA’s Return to Flight page and the Virtual Launch Control Center, which has current news (at 12:25 Eastern time, the astronauts had reached the launch pad).
I’ll update this entry here as things progress.
(Times are all Eastern)
12:45 p.m. Some of the astronauts are onboard Discovery and are getting strapped in.
1:34 p.m. DRAT! A hardware problem (a low level fuel sensor was misbehaving; it’s one of four, but they all need to be working) has scrubbed the launch for today. The astronauts are disembarking the Shuttle.
2:09 p.m. The astronauts have left the Shuttle. There will be a press conference no earlier than 4:30 p.m. to discuss what happened and what happens next.
I will have more info shortly.
July 13th, 2005 at 10:38 am
Darn.. launch scrubbed for today. Well safety 1st of course!
July 13th, 2005 at 11:28 am
I actually hadd some one from Berkley CA, that it was all a hoax and man never went into space because of radiation, and rockets would not work because they had nothing to push against. Phill your work will never end with people like that.
July 13th, 2005 at 11:48 am
Shoot…hoped to be seeing the shuttle fly again today. Safety’s important of course. Good luck to everybody at NASA on getting this problem remedied so we can return to flight!
July 13th, 2005 at 12:41 pm
To the guy from Berkley, A few years ago, I got passes to watch a Shuttle Launch from the jetty with my son. If that was a hoax, it was a darned impressive one. The vibrations nearly took my breath away. I suppose it’s possible it just went up and out of sight and landed at a secret military base or something, but it seems like an awful waste of rocket fuel to do so : ) Oh wait, sorry I am ex-Air Force and by definition part of the conspiracy.. move along, move along, go back to your lives..nothing to see here.
July 13th, 2005 at 5:12 pm
Technology… Why must it always break? ._.
July 13th, 2005 at 8:34 pm
But why would you leave a box containing transistors from a known defective batch in the shuttle and schedule a launch with them in place ? No doubt the story doesn’t give the full story.
Good on them for not bowing to public pressure to launch regardless. I wouldn’t have liked to make the call.
NASA – all the best on resolving it ASAP !
Ian
July 14th, 2005 at 1:01 am
Quote: Yeah, duh, like there’s other space news right now!
I thought the following was pretty major myself.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/232413_sun14.html
July 14th, 2005 at 1:05 am
Oops this is a better link.
http://www.nature.com/news/2005/050711/full/050711-6.html
July 14th, 2005 at 10:57 am
I agree with NASA, this flight is way too crucial for them to let something go wrong. If it does and in some way treatens the mission, even if the mission has problems originating from something totally different, they’ll get blamed that they did not cancel the mission to check the vehicle.
July 18th, 2005 at 4:51 am
Nice blog. Happy to be here.
July 18th, 2005 at 12:23 pm
BA, as I understand it there were two sensors that were faulty. They were under-reading when the tanks had about 2 million litres of H2(l) and O2(l) in them. Since these sensors control when the orbiter’s main engines shut off, this would have caused a premature shut-off and hence either the orbiter would not reach orbit, or it would reach too low an orbit, that would be unstable due to atmospheric drag. At least, that is what was reported on newscientist.com.
Anyway, since the shuttle is not in space, it’s not really space news. Also, Cassini is still taking some damn’ fine pictures. They’ve struck oil (well, probably some kind of liquid hydrocarbon at least) on Titan!
July 20th, 2005 at 5:10 am
Darn It! I extended my vacation, made a special flight to Florida, and drove eastward from Orlando with windows down stuck in heavy traffic as thousands headed for the launch when scrubbed past my five day window I allowed for some glitches that should have been corrected after the two and a half years of fixes.
Shouldn’t the thousands of us be reimbursed?
Hey, why complain?
In 1975 the Apollo-Soyuz Mission was scheduled. I borrowed my fiance’s ten speed bicycle and biked from Ludlow, MA towards Cape Kennedy with only $25, a small suitcase, sleeping bag, and a lot of determination to see that launch. I started out two weeks ahead getting to Virginia Beach with bald tires worn through. But I got the needed monies from her to take a Greyhound to Titusville, sold the bicycle for an additional $25 and saw the Saturn IVB launch, on time, to orbit.
NASA made a huge error of developing a space plane for USAF and Civilian options–the everything machine which is too darn complicated that one malfunctioning switch out of four scrubs a launch of international attention for weeks.
And the error continues.
Hey, I am an optimistic pro-solar system colonization space enthusiast. I even had a fund drive (Space Exploration Fund) 1979-1980 and was able to contribute it directly to NASA’s General Accounting Office along with the Viking Fund group. I even was at Edwards AFB with my spouse at the first Space Shuttle landing.
So, yes, I was quite disappointed at the scrub on July 13th.
And, millions of you were, too.
We need the Burt Rutans more than ever.
And a Buck Rogers in the 21st Century!!!