Update: F-15s have structural problems

The latest Air Force inspectors have discovered major structural flaws in eight older-model F-15 fighters, sparking a new round of examinations that could ground all of the older jets into January or beyond, senior Air Force and defense officials said.

The background: The Air Force's 442 F-15A through F-15D planes, the mainstay of the nation's air-to-air combat force for 30 years, have been grounded since November, when one of the airplanes broke into large chunks and crashed in rural Missouri.

The assessment: "This is going to be a major problem, and it's going to be a difficult one to recover from," said retired Air Force Gen. Dick Hawley. "You could basically be without the nation's primary air superiority capability for an extended period of time, which puts us at risk."

The latest: Leonardo da Vinci's "Codex Atlanticus," a collection of drawings and writings by the Renaissance master, has been infiltrated by mold.

How bad is it? Until a scientific analysis is done, the extent of the damage and its cause will not be identified, said Cecilia Frosinini, deputy director of the Florence-based state conservation institute, Opificio delle Pietre Dure.

Officials, however, say it appears the mold -- first noticed last year -- isn't spreading. But they also say that any conservation measures will be expensive and that there are no funds for the work. "I feel a moral responsibility now that we are aware of the problem, because it belongs to the whole world, not just Italy," Frosinini said.

The background: The roughly 1,120-page Codex contains Da Vinci's drawings and writings from 1478 to 1519 on topics ranging from flying machines to weapons, mathematics to botany. The Codex is kept in a vault at Milan's Biblioteca Ambrosiana, where temperature and humidity are constantly monitored. Most scholarly research is now done using photocopies, and 400 pages are available for viewing on the Internet.

The latest: NASA will wait two years longer than planned and spend another $40 million to launch its $475 million Mars Scout atmospheric probe because of an unspecified conflict of interest in the purchasing process.

The limited details: The program, which had been scheduled for a 2011 launch, was set to choose between two proposals for the mission by two Colorado research institutions. But a "serious" conflict of interest in one of the proposals forced NASA to disband the board formed to pick the proposal, said Mars Exploration Program Director Doug McCuistion. He refused to say who the conflict involved or what kind of conflict it was or who was on the board, saying revealing that type of data could "compromise the competition." The agency had to create an entirely new panel, causing a delay in awarding the contract.

The limits of science: Since Mars only comes close enough to Earth to launch probes every 26 months, NASA had to postpone the mission from 2011 to 2013. It will mark the first time in more than a decade that the U.S. space agency will miss an opportunity to explore the Red Planet, McCuistion said.

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