At their 3:30am post-scrub news conference, Deputy Shuttle Program Manager Leroy Cain and STS-127 Launch Director Pete Nickolenko addressed the leak during tanking and the decision to the scrub the launch.

The 3 hour tanking, or fueling, procedure was to begin at 8:15pm but was delayed until a little after 11pm last night due to thunderstorms in launch pad area at KSC.  Tanking cannot begin if there are electrical storms within 5 miles of the launch pad.  The launch team was confident that tanking could begin at 11 and that they could make up launch preparation time in other areas of the countdown.  But a little over an hour into the tanking procedure, higher than the maximum allowable  hydrogen levels at the Ground Umbilical Carrier Plate prompted STS-127 Launch Director Peter Nickolenko to scrub the launch. 

Leroy Cain also talked about this being the same leak that caused the first scrub this past Saturday and the delay of Discovery's launch in March.  "We're going to step back and figure out what the problem is and go fix it.  Once we get it fixed and we're confident that we have a solution that's going to work and allow us to go fly safely, then we'll proceed forward."

Launch managers have set a new target launch date for Endeavour: Saturday, July 11th at 7:39pm.  The LRO/LCROSS mission which was delayed one day due to Endeavour's rescheduled launch, will lift off as scheduled Thursday at 5:12pm.  You can watch the LRO/LCROSS launch live on Channel 12.

FCA's pre launch to landing coverage of STS-127 from NASA TV begins Friday, July 10th on Channel 12, the Education Channel.  See you then!