"We have done everything we can to maintain the option of flying on Saturday," LeRoy Cain, head of the mission team, told reporters late Thursday.

Mission officials were due to meet at 3:00 pm (1900 GMT) and expect to decide later Friday if that will be possible.

The shuttle was supposed to launch from Florida on Thursday with its crew of seven for an 11-day mission to fly the European Columbus laboratory to the International Space Station, hundreds of miles above Earth.

But the launch was postponed hours before lift-off, due to technical problems with fuel gauges on the shuttle's external fuel tanks. "It's a very complex situation," Cain said, referring to the problems.

The mission is now hoping to launch on Saturday afternoon. Weather permitting, Atlantis will lift off at 3:43 pm (2043 GMT) from the Kennedy Space Center near Cape Canaveral, NASA said. Weather conditions are reported to be 60 percent favorable.

Atlantis' crew includes a French and a German astronaut, joining the mission to add the European installation. Countries are developing the station as a possible future jumping-off point for deeper space exploration.

During fueling, two of the shuttle's gauges showed that the fuel tank was empty when in fact it was almost full. A similar problem with the gauges occurred in July 2005, delaying a launch of the Discovery shuttle.

NASA on Friday morning still had not determined the cause of the glitch, but engineers suspected it was linked to electronic units or cables linking the gauges to the shuttle's computers, Cain said.

The shuttle is tanked up with two million liters (half a million gallons) of hydrogen and liquid oxygen to blast it out of Earth's atmosphere. The gauges show when nearly all the fuel has been burnt once in orbit, and the engines are shut off to prevent them being damaged by firing without fuel.

Under rules NASA introduced after the 2003 Colombia shuttle disaster in which seven astronauts died, three of the gauges must be working for a launch to go ahead, although technically only one is needed for the shuttle to function.

The current window of opportunity for a launch closes on December 13. If Atlantis has to return to its hangar for repairs, the mission would be delayed until mid-January, said launch director Doug Lyons.

This would disrupt the schedule of future trips to the space station, including one to deliver the next installation: the Japanese Kibo laboratory.

Community
Email This Article
Comment On This Article

Related Links
Shuttle at NASA
Watch NASA TV via Space.TV
Space Shuttle News at Space-Travel.Com

Memory Foam Mattress Review

SPACE MEDIA NETWORK PROMOTIONS Solar Energy Solutions Tempur-Pedic Mattress Comparison ... Newsletters :: SpaceDaily :: SpaceWar :: TerraDaily :: Energy Daily XML Feeds :: Space News :: Earth News :: War News :: Solar Energy News