Yet Another Discovery Delay

A day long meeting at NASA headquarters Friday resulted in delaying once again the next space shuttle launch. Engineers are still uncomfortable with the fuel valves that led to the original delay. There is now a real chance that Discovery won't fly until April.

NASA is also studying the debris cloud created by the collision of two satellites earlier this month. Preliminary thinking is that the debris poses only a slightly increased risk to the ISS, but that the Hubble repair mission could be in jeopardy because of an increased risk to astronauts in that area. NASA will continue monitoring the debris cloud.

Worthy of note: If the Hubble repair mission is ultimately canceled because of the risk posed by the debris, it would be the first spaceflight scrapped because of a manmade danger in orbit.