Space Shuttle Launch Delayed Again

The launch of the US space shuttle Endeavour on its final voyage has been further delayed by technical problems, NASA said on Sunday.

It had been hoped Endeavour would lift off on Monday after Friday's original launch was scrapped, but NASA said this would not now happen due to ongoing problems with the shuttle's electrical systems.

"NASA managers determined it is not possible to launch Endeavour on Monday, which had been the earliest possible liftoff date," the US space agency wrote in a Twitter message on Sunday.

Endeavour is poised to carry a potent, multibillion dollar tool for searching the universe in the second-to-last flight for NASA's 30-year program.

After Endeavour returns from its 14-day mission and Atlantis launches for a final time in June, the space shuttle program will close for good.

That will leave Russia as the sole taxi for astronauts heading to and from the orbiting space lab until a new spaceship is built by a partnership between NASA and private companies, by 2015 at the earliest.
Endeavour will carry to the ISS and leave behind the two-billion-dollar, seven-ton particle physics detector, the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer-2, which will scour the universe for clues as to how it all began.

The flight is to be commanded by Mark Kelly, husband of wounded Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, who has completed months of excruciating rehab after being shot in the head during a public gathering last January.