NASA Extends Discovery Shuttle Mission

Boston (dbTechno) - NASA has made the announcement that they have added a day to the shuttle Discovery’s mission up at the International Space Station to allow for further work to be done on the power system of the outpost.

NASA made the announcement on Monday stating that more time is needed for spacewalkers to be able to look into and address the problems regarding the power system of the International Space Station.

The Discovery will be staying in space a bit longer as they were originally supposed to depart from the ISS next Sunday. Instead they will have to stay one extra day coming back on Monday.

Spacewalker Dan Tani satted that he found shards of metal scrapings all around the area of the joint on the space station. He stated “I was quite sure there was something anomalous with the mechanism.”

NASA has decided to lock the solar panels in place to avoid further damage. This will kepe them from working the rotary joint. These limit the amount of power the station can produce. The International Space Station must be prepared before the Japan science lab, Kibo launches next year.

NASA stated this delay will likely cut the launch window for the next mission by a day. The next mission is for the NASA shuttle Atlantis to fly the Columbus laboratory to the International Space Station. The target launch date is set for December 6th.