Endeavour Leak Located, To Be Repaired

NASA officials have located the source for a leak in the crew cabin of space shuttle Endeavour and have ordered a repair. The replacement of a faulty relief valve will not impact the shuttle launch date.

Shuttle workers had been tracing the elusive leak since the weekend as they readied Endeavour for its planned Aug. 7 launch from Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

"The problem has been traced to one of two positive pressure relief valves which assure that the crew cabin does not become over-pressurized," said George Diller, a NASA spokesperson at KSC, in a status update.

Engineers will swap out the faulty valve with a working one taken from Endeavour's sister ship Atlantis during a fix that is expected to be complete by Thursday.

"There is no impact to the space shuttle's Aug. 7 launch date," Diller said of the repair.

Mission managers also opted not to replace thermostats in one of Endeavour's auxiliary power units found to be returning off-nominal signals, NASA officials said. The glitch is not violating operational specifications and is understood by engineers, they added.

At least it turned out to be relatively simple. (I know from personal experience what a pain relief valves can be. I can't even count the number of times plants I worked at had to deal with leaking reliefs.)