Fergie's Tech Blog

NASA Scrubs Shuttle Launch Citing Lightning Strike, Weather

Tariq malik writes on Space.com:

NASA engineers are battling thunderstorms and rain as they struggle to understand the impact of a launch pad lightning strike that scrubbed the planned Sunday liftoff of the space shuttle Atlantis.

Shuttle officials have found at least two anomalies – one on Atlantis’ Pad 39B launch pad and another on the orbiter itself – associated with a powerful lightning strike Friday that led them to postpone the Aug. 27 space shot. But a comprehensive survey of those areas must wait until heavy thunderstorms and a lightning threat pass over NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) launch site.

“We think it may be the largest lightning strike in terms of the current,” Cain said in a press briefing here after the scrub, adding that the bolt’s strength measured around 100,000 amps. “We know just enough to know that we don’t know enough to be able to press on into a launch countdown tomorrow.”

posted by Fergie @ 8/26/2006 08:06:00 PM