Shuttle ‘Dodged’ Engine Failure, Space Official Says

WASHINGTON — The space shuttle Columbia has “dodged a bullet” by flying repeatedly with a poorly redesigned and cracked temperature sensor that could have come loose in a fuel line and caused an engine failure, a top shuttle manager said Wednesday.

Columbia’s launch, scheduled for Wednesday, was delayed after NASA officials received their first report on the problem from a contractor late Monday. The dimensions of the problem were not recognized for seven months after the faulty sensor was removed for analysis in part because the contractor initially sent it to the wrong subcontractor, officials said.

Engineers on Wednesday found similar, though less serious, cracks on at least two fuel line sensors in the shuttle Discovery.

The sensor was removed from Columbia last September, when it was suspected of contributing to excessive hydrogen leakage. But another part was identified as the major source of the hydrogen leaks and the temperature sensor’s leakage was declared to have been minor.

As it turned out, the sensor was severely cracked. “We dodged a bullet on that,” said Dan Germany, who heads the orbiter program at Johnson Space Center in Houston. “The weld was cracked all the way around. The inside was cracked as well. It was a matter of time before that tip would have broken off.”