NASA says shuttle Atlantis might launch Friday
Updated Wed. Sep. 6 2006 7:49 PM ET

CTV.ca News Staff

For the second time today, NASA has announced a delay of the launch of space shuttle Atlantis. It will take at least until Friday to fully investigate a new problem with the shuttle.


For now, officials have set a Friday launch time of 11:40 a.m. ET.


"It was really one of those 50-50 decisions," Wayne Hale, space shuttle program manager, told reporters. "It you want high drama, this is about as good as it gets."


NASA scrubbed Wednesday's planned liftoff after discovering a problem with a fuel cell early in the morning. The space agency had re-scheduled the launch for 12:03 p.m. ET Thursday, then later in the day pushed it back to Friday.


Officials said they will either replace the fuel cell or simply ignore the problem, since that would not violate any safety rules.


If officials ignore the problem, there is a 30 per cent chance bad weather could still delay the launch. And if NASA decides to replace the fuel cell, the operation would take several weeks.


Officials detected the power problem when one of three cells providing electricity to Atlantis malfunctioned before the shuttle was to be fuelled.


Engineers discovered that a coolant pump that chills one of the shuttle's three electricity-generating fuel cells was giving an erratic reading.


If the shuttle doesn't take off this week, the launch will most likely be postponed until late October, so it would not interfere with a Russian mission to the space station later in the month.


This isn't the first time a fuel cell problem has caused a scrub, Buckingham noted.


Prior to Wednesday's delay, NASA said there was a 70 per cent chance Atlantis would take flight.


Canadian astronaut Steve MacLean is among the crew aboard the shuttle, which is on a construction mission to the international space station.


Atlantis has been plagued by several delays, including the grounding of the fleet after the Columbia shuttle accident, safety problems after Discovery's flight in 2005, a lightning strike last month, and the threat of Tropical Storm Ernesto last week.


The shuttle is to deliver a 16,000-kilogram, $372 million addition to the half-built space station during an 11-day mission. Four astronauts will take three spacewalks to resume construction on the orbiting lab, the first work in more than three years after Columbia broke apart while returning to Earth.


This mission to deliver two girders crucial to the space stations' continued expansion must be done before the final 14 shuttle flights.


The Russians plan to launch a Soyuz capsule on Sept. 18 ferrying two new station crewmembers and the space station's first female tourist, Dallas-area entrepreneur Anousheh Ansari. Officials with both space agencies wanted to avoid the shuttle and Soyuz meeting at the station, fearing a traffic jam.


Atlantis' mission will be the first since late 2002 to expand the space station. The last two flights were tests evaluating a redesign of the external fuel tank, whose falling foam was blamed for the Columbia accident.


With files from The Associated Press