Avi Blizovsky
NASA suspended the launch of the Endeavor spacecraft scheduled for today due to an oxygen leak from the crew compartment. The leak was found late Sunday, 10/11 in the system that carries the oxygen to the astronauts' helmets during takeoff. NASA officials feared that the leak would worsen during the launch.
Endeavor was supposed to be launched around one o'clock in the morning EST (eight in the morning, Israel time), but it has now been postponed for an unknown time. Earlier it was learned that on this ill-fated flight, two of the astronauts were replaced by their backup personnel due to illness. It should be noted that preparations for a flight take years and it is not pleasant to be sick precisely at the critical moment. Who knows, maybe the postponement will allow them to recover and complete the task for which they have been preparing for so long.
The shuttle carried an iron rail to the space station, which cost 390 million dollars - one of several that will be mutually interlocked to serve as railroad tracks for transporting astronauts and a robotic arm from one end of the station to the other. The structure, which will serve as the backbone of the station, when completed, will support additional solar collectors that will provide electricity for scientific experiments that will be conducted at the station.
Endeavor will also bring with it replacements for the station's crew and will return with its three current residents - Russians Fleur Kurzon and Sergey Treshchev and their American commander, Peggy Whitson, who spoke a few months ago from the station with students from Israel.
And in the meantime, a Soyuz spacecraft with two Russian cosmonauts and a Belgian astronaut who stayed a week at the International Space Station and assisted its crew in the construction of the station, landed safely on the steppes of Kazakhstan. The three went up to the station on October 30 in another Soyuz spacecraft that will serve as the station's rescue boat and returned with the previous rescue boat - the Soyuz must be replaced once in a while to be sure of their integrity.
https://www.hayadan.org.il/BuildaGate4/general2/data_card.php?Cat=~~~370035361~~~86&SiteName=hayadan
