The space shuttle Discovery may have put NASA back into the human spaceflight business after the 2003 Columbia disaster, but it will be up to shuttle Atlantis to keep it there, Reuters reported. That may not happen for some time. Discovery returned on Tuesday from a 14-day mission to test post-Columbia safety upgrades and resupply the International Space Station. "I think we met the milestone of return to flight and the next test-flight is in the works," said shuttle program manager Bill Parsons. But the planned launch of Atlantis on NASA's next shuttle mission in September was in doubt after the space agency found that the $1 billion and 2-1/2 years of effort spent on fixing a problem that doomed Columbia had failed to produce the hoped-for results. Columbia was destroyed after falling foam from its external fuel tank ruptured the wing on takeoff. Sixteen days later, on Feb. 1, 2003, the spacecraft fell apart over Texas when the tremendous heat of re-entry ate into the breach. When Discovery took off on July 26, foam insulation also fell from its tank, which had been billed as the safest ever to fly. NASA was forced to ground the rest of the fleet until the problem is solved. --more 2341 Local Time 2041 GMT
