US space shuttle fleet to be grounded until September

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Sunday, July 14, 2002

US space shuttle fleet to be grounded until September

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US space agency NASA's space shuttle fleet will be grounded until at least September because of small but potentially dangerous engine cracks found in each of thefour orbiters, The Washington Post newspaper reported on Saturday.

Shuttle program manager Ron Dittemore said engineers must be able to prove the cracks will not get worse, or that any repairs will not cause additional problems, before flights can resume.

Over the past month, 11 cracks have been found in the four US shuttles, three each in Atlantis, Discovery and Columbia, and two aboard Endeavour.

The cracks, measuring 3 to 8 millimeters in size, were located along the metal fuel liners used to direct the flow of liquid hydrogen fuel to the main engines.

It is still unclear when and how these cracks were formed. NASA's concern is that if a crack worsened in flight, a piece of metaldebris could break off, get sucked into a main engine and trigger a catastrophic failure.

NASA had planned three shuttle flights for the rest of the year.Columbia had been scheduled for a July 19 launch on a 16-day research mission involving the first Israeli astronaut, followed on Aug. 22 and in mid-October by Atlantis and Endeavour, on two international space station assembly missions.

With the liftoff of Columbia and Atlantis put on hold, NASA's original shuttle program is now in disarray.

Dittemore said he plans to begin discussions with space stationprogram managers next week to assess which flight to launch first once the crack issue is resolved.

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