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NASA Delays Atlantis Launch Until Saturday Afternoon

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By KURT LOFT, The Tampa Tribune

Published: December 7, 2007

TAMPA - If at first you can't get off the ground, fly, fly again.

That's the attitude of space shuttle managers, who will try to get Atlantis airborne Saturday after a technical glitch kept astronauts on the pad Thursday. The fourth and final mission of the year will deliver a European science laboratory to the International Space Station and put NASA on track for a busy 2008.

Technicians were concerned with two gauges that failed to detect fuel in the external tank, when in fact it was loaded with 500,000 gallons of liquid hydrogen and oxygen. Preliminary indications were that the problem might be with an open circuit rather than the gauges themselves - perhaps a spliced line or bad connector. Mission managers met well into the evening, debating how best to proceed with the countdown. They decided to forgo a launch attempt today to give engineers more time to figure out what was wrong and resolve the trouble.

Unless another problem pops up, NASA will attempt to launch Atlantis at 3:43 p.m. Saturday. An unmanned Atlas rocket is waiting to lift off Monday, which requires the use of tracking stations around Kennedy Space Center.

The shuttle mission involves hundreds of scientists from the European Space Agency, and all are eager to see the 23-foot Columbus attached to the station. Columbus is a self-contained lab designed for experiments in microgravity.

The shuttle crew includes commander Stephen N. Frick; pilot Alan G. Poindexter; and mission specialists Rex J. Walheim, Stanley G. Love, Leland D. Melvin and Hans Schlegel of the European Space Agency. Poindexter, Love and Melvin will be making their first spaceflight. Atlantis also will pick up astronaut Daniel Tani, who has been on the space station, and replace him with Leopold Eyharts, also on the European team.

Information from The Associated Press was used in this report. Reporter Kurt Loft can be reached at kloft@tampatrib.com or (813) 259-7570.

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