Preliminary inspections on Endeavour's booster after it was plucked from the Atlantic Ocean indicate a broken wire may have been responsible for the failure and not a problem with the detonator itself. That's good news for NASA because replacing or inspecting detonators would have required taking Atlantis and its external tank off the two boosters to gain access. NASA managers opted for a round of X-ray inspections of Atlantis' electrical cable connectors in the separation system wiring to be performed in the VAB where engineers have access to the hardware. That's going to take a little bit of time to understand. And you need to really understand what the root cause is to define an plan of action to verify that we have good integrity on the vehicle that's in the VAB before it rolls out to the pad.
Destiny is the centerpiece for U.S. scientific research aboard the orbiting outpost.
A Lockheed Martin Athena 1 will launch the Kodiak Star mission for NASA and the Air Force no sooner than Saturday from Kodiak Island, Alaska. Visit the Tracking Station for a full listing of upcoming launches.