Repairs to the shuttle began on Tuesday, September 18, and ended Friday. NASA and contractor engineers found that the seal was leaking at a rate of about one drop every 20 seconds, where an acceptable leakage rate is about one drop every one hour.

Officials with NASA are confident that if subsequent testing of the seals proves that the repairs were successful, then the space shuttle Discovery and its STS-120 mission will lift off on its scheduled October 23, 2007 date.

In fact, according to the report by Aero-News.net, NASA spokesperson Allard Beutel states, "Right now, we're still targeting October 23. That's not off the table. We didn't encounter any glitches while we were putting it back together. There's nothing else we think would pop up."

{moscomment}