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| Home | Headlines | NASA LOX Valve Replaced | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
HeadlinesNASA LOX Valve Replaced- 4/1/2009The source of the leak was found to be the oxidizer inlet valve on the Centaur upper stage's RL10 engine. Earlier countdown simulations involving loading cryogenics onto the craft also saw the inlet valve leaking slightly, but not nearly as seriously as the leak on March 17. The cause of the leak remains unknown, but a new valve was installed last week. It performed well in all types of testing, showing no signs of leakage. "We feel very fortunate to find this on the ground,” says Mark Wilkins, United Launch Alliance's vice president of the Atlas product line. “However, we believe it's very unlikely that the leakage that we saw would have had any effect on this mission. But what this really allows us to do is have the hardware in hand that's displayed this discrepant condition, and we can get it back on the bench and determine what caused it and do a very a thorough investigation, which would not be afforded to us if we would have saw this type of leakage as a flight observation." Read the full story on Spaceflight Now. 
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