NASA’s shuttle programme manager, John Shannon said that the cracks appeared due to a combination of substandard material and assembly issues.

The problem is resolved now
The cracks appeared in five out of the 108 struts, which hold instruments in the centre of the tank. Engineers have repaired the damaged struts made of aluminium alloy and the remaining struts are also being reinforced as a precaution.

The cracks are under evaluation and NASA hopes they will not delay the much delayed Feb. 3rd launch.

The launch of the space craft has already been delayed several times. Some other cracks in the shuttle have forced NASA to defer the Dec. 17 launch and push it to February.

Since then, the technicians have been scanning the external fuel tank including all the 108 support beams called stringers and in the process discovered small cracks on top of stringers on panel 6.

According to online tabloid reports, the explosion of the star in a nearby galaxy was first observed by an amateur stargazer in 1979, but it took decades of observation to confirm it has become a black hole.

Death of a star
The death of the star reportedly took place in the relatively nearby M100 galaxy some 50 million miles from Earth, according to The Associated Press.

UK’s Telegraph is reporting that the supernova, named SN 1979C, looked brighter for a brief time than all the billions of other stars in the same galaxy put together.