Dec. 7 Launch for Next Shuttle?

HOUSTON, Sept. 28, 2006 — -- NASA would like to announce Dec. 7 as the official launch date for STS-116, the next space shuttle mission to the International Space Station.

It had been tentatively scheduled for later in the month, but the space agency is anxious to get it off the ground and make shuttle missions as regular as possible.

The PRCB -- Program Review Control Board, a panel of senior shuttle managers -- is meeting at the Johnson Space Center in Houston this afternoon.

The panel makes regular decisions about shuttle missions.

But there is a hitch.

Discovery -- the shuttle scheduled for the STS-116 mission -- was damaged during processing on Wednesday.

During a test, there was trouble with a door that covers one of the connections between the orbiter and the orange external tank.

The door, on the shuttle's underside, would have to be able to close for the ship to re-enter Earth's atmosphere safely at the end of the flight.

Right now, the mechanism that does that is not working.

Engineers would have to take a part off another shuttle to replace this broken part.

Some say this is a simple matter of removing and replacing a part. If they are right, then a December launch is possible.

STS-116 would continue the assembly of the International Space Station -- a process that resumed earlier this month after a four-year delay caused by the Columbia accident in 2003.