Science

NASA replaces Discovery's leaky seal, STS-120 hopefully not delayed

by William Atkins

Saturday, 22 September 2007

On Friday, September 21, 2007, NASA officials report that its engineers have replaced all four hydraulic seals, even though only one was leaking, within the right main landing gear assembly.

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The Wednesday, September 19, 2007 iTWire article “Leaky seals found on NASA’s shuttle Discovery” goes into details of the events surrounding the leaky hydraulic seals.

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."

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