Discovery's last launch, live!

After days of postponement due to bad weather the Space Shuttle Discovery has been given a go for 'tanking' to begin loading the tanks with more than 500,000 gallons of liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen.There is a 70 percent chance of a launch today.

You can watch Discovery's last ever mission launch on NASA TV here and the launch is on time to begin at 3:04pm EDT. Which will be 8:04pm Central European time and 7:04pm UK time.

Today's schedule is as follows.

November 5, Friday
5:30 a.m. - STS-133 Fueling Coverage – KSC (All Channels)
9:30 a.m. - STS-133 Launch Coverage (Launch scheduled at 3:04 p.m. EDT) – KSC/JSC (All Channels)
4 p.m. - STS-133 Post-Launch News Conference – KSC (All Channels)
All times are EDT US.

Space Shuttle discovery is planned to be decommisioned in 2011 and has been offered to the smithsonian museum to go on public display. STS-133 will be the third from last shuttle mission ever before the fleet is retired.

The STS-133 mission will have two scheduled space walks and amongst other things will deliver Robonaut 2 to the International Space Station. This will be Discovery's 39th mission and the 164th manned American space flight.

It will be a 12 day mission and during the entire time you can watch all the proceedings live on NASA TV.

There is also a good thread that takes a look back at the shuttle Discovery started by mblahnikluver that anybody interested should check out. I hope they don't mind me linking it here.
www.abovetopsecret.com...

The mission will also see Discovery deliver the The Permanent Multipurpose Module (PMM) to the ISS which is primarily a permanent storage add on.

Also T minus 7 and a bit hours to launch.

Good luck Robonaut! And apologies for your transport vehicle.

haha! I just logged in to create this very thread! lol

for days it;s been put off,
but right now, as I type, Discovery is fired up!


I think about 3 1/2 hours from now, is when she launches.

reply to post by Ahmose


I think the wind is the only issue they will face, hopefully it wont be delayed any longer.
It's actually around 6 and a half hours to go, they have the countdown clock on the shuttle web page.
www.nasa.gov...

Originally posted by pazcat
reply to post by Ahmose

 

I think the wind is the only issue they will face, hopefully it wont be delayed any longer.
It's actually around 6 and a half hours to go, they have the countdown clock on the shuttle web page.
www.nasa.gov...

oh!

I only said 3 1/2 hours, because about 10 minutes before I logged in to ATS,
I was watching the live coverage,. and the big digital countdown clock outside said
[-03-44-14]hours/minutes/seconds.

Launch Scrubbed for at least 72 hours!
Thats Monday.

if not by then..
Not until December.

No earlier than monday, Leak in the GUP location.
They are draining tanks now.

reply to post by Ahmose


Yeah the big clock outside is different, they normally stop the clock and hold it for a while so it's shows a different time.

But anyway postponed because of a fuel leak.

The leak was detected at around 7:30 a.m. EDT (1130 GMT) in a location known as the Ground Umbilical Carrier Plate, which is an attachment point between the external tank and a 17-inch pipe that carries gaseous hydrogen safely away from the shuttle to the flare stack, where it is burned off.

www.space.com...

Oh well, thread postponed too I guess. Still best to know about these things.

Space shuttle managers have scrubbed Discovery’s launch attempt for today due to a hydrogen leak at the Ground Umbilical Carrier Plate, or GUCP (pronounced GUP). The next launch attempt would be no earlier than Monday.

www.nasa.gov...

There will be a press conference later in the afternoon to go over what went wrong and what will happen next.

Postponed to late November now.

NASA managers have decided to postpone the next launch attempt for space shuttle Discovery to no earlier than Nov. 30 at 4:05 a.m. EST.

www.nasa.gov...

NASA TV.
They are almost getting confined to the internet.
Same thing happened to Moon Landing TV and look how the
internet treats that endeavor.
Science breaks barriers and then gets broken.