Discovery is scheduled to be launched at 10:39 a.m.
Fueling has been completed and the crew is on board.
The errant fuel gauge that caused the launch to be scrubbed two weeks ago tested was reported to be working after filling the external tank was filled with 526,000 gallons of liquid hydrogen and oxygen. It's good the troublesome gauge is working because NASA seems willing to bend rules to launch Discovery even though the sensor malfunction is still unexplained:
NASA had the paperwork ready to go in case the equipment trouble reappeared and the space agency's managers decided to press ahead with the launch with just three of the four fuel gauges working. That would mean deviating from a rule instituted after the 1986 Challenger explosion.
"It's an acceptable risk and actually it's quite a low one," NASA Administrator Michael Griffin said in an interview with The Associated Press late Monday afternoon. If the same fuel gauge problem occurs, "we would be good to go," he said. "If we see some other signature than what we saw before, then we're not going. We're absolutely not going."
The fuel gauges are designed to prevent the main engines from running too long or not long enough, in case the fuel tank is leaking or some other major breakdown occurs. An engine shutdown at the wrong time could prove catastrophic, forcing the astronauts to attempt a risky emergency landing overseas, or leading to a ruptured engine.
[. . .]
Only two gauges, or sensors, are needed to do the job. But since NASA's return to space in 1988, the agency has decreed that all four have to work.
Go Discovery!
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