Perhaps the Discovery shuttle will have better luck in 2011. NASA revealed Thursday that technicians have uncovered even more cracks on Discovery's external tank.
It's unclear what effect these cracks will have on the shuttle's planned February 3 launch.
Separate cracks prompted NASA to scrap a December 17 launch earlier this month and push it to February. Since then, technicians have been working to fix the cracks and discover what caused them in the first place.
NASA said Thursday that they are "essentially done" with the latest round of X-ray image scans of Discovery's external fuel tank, which took pictures of all 108 support beams, or stringers, on the outside of the external tank's intertank section.
However, in doing so, technicians discovered small cranks on the top of stringers on panel 6, which is on the opposite side of the tank from the shuttle. "The newly detected cracks currently are under evaluation," NASA said.
Space Shuttle Program managers are meeting Thursday afternoon to decide if modifications on the stringers are needed. If they are, those modifications will begin on Monday, January 3.
Discovery was initially scheduled to take off and head to the International Space Station (ISS) on November 1. Leaks, inclement weather, electrical issues, and cracks, however, have delayed that launch more than a half dozen times.
More recently, NASA suggested a December 17 time window for Discovery's launch. At the time, they were still trying to figure out what caused the cracks and were leaning toward an assembly issue. NASA was not too concerned about the delays, however. They are not currently under budget constraints, and would rather be 100 percent sure of Discovery's safety before taking off, officials said.
Late last month, three crew members from the ISS returned safely to Earth after a 5.5-month mission. American astronauts Doug Wheelock and Shannon Walker, as well as Russian cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin, landed in Kazakhstan at 10:46am local time November 26. On December 17, Expedition 26 crew members Dmitry Kondratyev, Catherine Coleman and Paolo Nespoli arrived at the ISS to replace them, bringing the number of astronauts at the ISS to six.