Space Shuttle Discovery Mission STS-124 Video

[Airline News]

We have live and ongoing coverage of Space Shuttle Discovery's flight to the international space station on mission STS-124 for the duration of the flight.

They are carrying the Kibo (hope) module from Japan, dropping one astronaut off, bring another home, and leaving behind spare parts for the broken toilet on the ISS.

See the video:

Space Shuttle Discovery

[Airline News]

The crew of Space Shuttle Discovery have launched on time today at 5:02 pm ET.

This is mission STS-124 to the Space Station.

They are carrying Kibo from Japan.

[Airline News]

While the launch seems to have gone very smoothly, I did notice a few strange things during the ascent.

I post this just after MECO and external tank separation.

While inverted, between 2 and 4 minutes into the ascent, I noticed what appeared to be several large dark objects depart the spacecraft.

As this series of events unfolded, since Discovery was upside down with strong sunshine from above, it did appear that what seemed to be dark objects falling off Discovery were in fact pieces of ice flying off the top of the tank and the dark objects were just sharp shadows racing along the Shuttle's underside.

Later, once upright, and before MECO (Main Engine Cut-off), there was also a very clear spray of debris from the aft end of the Shuttle, seemingly from the SSMEs or main engines but it could also be coming from the OMS (orbital maneuvering system) rockets, or both. This was about the time of throttle back and when the orbiter was producing visible plasma.

Great light today on the Space Shuttle - just stunning with an amazing view of the SRB separation from the ground cameras too.

[Airline News]

Live NASA video reveals that the back-up or secondary electronics which control the gimbal movements of the left side OMS appear to have failed on Discovery during ascent.

NASA says this does not appear to threaten the flight.

[Airline News]

After the major OMS burn to circularize their orbit, Mission Control issued a warning about how to go about the normal OMS check - Houston said that on the left side, Discovery should only test the primary system, not secondary.

Commander Mark Kelly asked if they should test the primary OMS system twice. Houston said yes.

NASA says the primary and secondary OMS gimbal system electronics are isolated from each other and the problem with the secondary or back-up electronics, has no impact on the primary system.