- WASHINGTON - Engineers have identified the technical problem that delayed the space shuttle Endeavour's final mission last week, but the next liftoff attempt will not be before May 10, NASA said Monday.
"NASA space shuttle and International Space Station managers met Monday and determined that Tuesday, May 10 is the earliest Endeavour could be launched on the STS-134 mission," the US space agency said in a statement.
The mission of the shuttle Endeavour is to be the US program's second-to-last flight to the International Space Station, followed by Atlantis in June. After that, the 30-year-old US shuttle program will end.
The glitch, which caused NASA to scrub the attempt hours before liftoff Friday, was traced to a power problem in the aft load control assembly-2 (ALCA-2), a box of switches that control electrical flow to heaters that keep fuel lines from freezing in orbit.
"The plan is to remove and replace the box, but that work and related testing will take several days to complete," NASA said.
"Plans are for managers to reconvene Friday to determine a more definite launch date after the box is removed and replaced and the retest of systems has been completed."
The six-member crew of astronauts left Florida on Sunday and are engaging in more mission training at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas while they wait for the next launch attempt date to be announced.
Endeavour will carry a $2 billion, seven-ton particle physics detector, the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer-2, which will be left at the space station to scour the universe for dark matter and antimatter.
The 14-day mission, known as STS-134, is to be commanded by US astronaut Mark Kelly, whose wife, Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, is recovering from a gunshot wound to the head sustained in January.
Giffords was allowed by her rehab doctors in Houston to fly to Florida to watch the launch, and she is expected to return again for the next attempt, her office said.
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