Discovery's Second External Tank Test a Success, NASA Says

Posted on: May. 22nd, 2005 || Source: space.com | E-mail Article | Print Article

NASA once again fueled the space shuttle Discovery’s external tank for Friday in a test to iron out sensor and valve glitches.

Over the course of 11 hours, shuttle workers pumped and drained more than 500,000 gallons (1.9 million liters) of supercold propellant into Discovery’s external tank, which stands upright with the rest of the launch stack at Kennedy Space Center's Pad 39B in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Unlike an April 14 test, engineers detected no fuel gauge sensor malfunctions during the fueling process, but did monitor an identical pressure valve anomaly from the earlier run.

"We had just a perfect test as far as I’m concerned," said William Parsons, NASA's shuttle program manager, during a post-test teleconference. "[But] we still have a lot of data to look at."

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