Thursday, July 06, 2006
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - Space shuttle Discovery, trailing a tail of yellow fire and swelling gray smoke, launched into central Florida's amazing summer sky Tuesday like an extra-large Independence Day Roman candle.
After two weather delays over the weekend and questions about lost lagging foam from the orbiter's external fuel tank, Discovery enjoyed an incident-free countdown on its method to the first-ever launch of a space shuttle on the Fourth of July.
Shuttle Project Manager Wayne Hale said the outer tank "performed very well indeed." He said there were five instances of foam loss during launch, but "we saw nothing that gives us any concern about the health of the vehicle."
A report by Astronaut Michael Fossum that heat shielding fabric had come movable from the orbiter was, Hale said, in fact ice that drifted away from the nozzles of the shuttle's chief engines that are cooled with liquid hydrogen during launch.
"We have seen it come off several times," Hale said at a news conference. "You look at it and you say it's got to be fabric, but it's clearly ice."
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@ 1:43 AM
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