CNN.com (which occasionally gets things right) is reporting that a recent hailstorm has damaged the external tank and one wing of the Space Shuttle, and NASA will delay the flight by one month. As you may recall, the external tank is covered with insulating foam, and it was a small piece falling off which damaged the Shuttle Columbia, causing it to disintegrate upon re-entry. Obviously, NASA takes damage to the tank very seriously. I don't know what this will mean to the overall schedule, or to the Hubble servicing mission scheduled for next September. Oh-- note to any NASA HQ people reading this blog: having the center web pages redirect to the NASA main portal is irritating but understandable. But why does http://www.ksc.nasa.gov redirect, but http://ksc.nasa.gov gives a "Server not found" error? The same is true for msfc and gsfc, by the way. Did someone not want to spend the money on the extra domain name? :-) It's not hard to get that set up on the server; see what happens when you use http://badastronomy.com. If I can do it, I bet NASA can too.
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