Cape Canaveral (Florida): NASA has delayed Sunday's planned launch of space shuttle Atlantis to assess possible damage from a lightning strike on the ship's Florida launch pad, the US space agency said on Saturday.
Postponement of the launch till Monday will give managers more time to analyse data from shuttle systems and ground support equipment that may have been affected by the lightning bolt that struck on Friday.
Additional delays will depend on whether repairs are required, following what the senior shuttle program manager at Florida's Kennedy Space Center, LeRoy Cain, called the biggest lightning strike to hit a shuttle launch pad.
"At this point we don't have enough data to really know whether or not we have any problems. We don't know enough to be able to press on into a launch situation tomorrow," Cain said on Saturday at a news conference.
The Atlantis mission, the third since the 2003 space shuttle Columbia disaster, is a critical part of NASA's efforts to finish building the International Space Station before the shuttle fleet is retired in 2010.
The lightning bolt struck a thick wire at the top of the shuttle's seaside launch pad at about 1800 hours GMT on Friday. The wire is part of the launch pad's lightning protection system.
Engineers were looking at least two potential problems from the strike, including a ground system used to vent hydrogen from the shuttle's external fuel tank and an electronic component aboard the spacecraft.
If NASA can make a launch attempt on Monday it would be under much more favorable weather conditions than had been forecast for Sunday, with just a 20 per cent chance of a weather-related delay.
Tropical Storm Ernesto could also complicate NASA's launch plans for Atlantis.
By Thursday, the storm, which is projected to hit the Gulf of Mexico, could develop into a Category three hurricane on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale of storm intensity, with sustained winds of at least 178 kilometre per hour.
NASA is concerned the storm could pose a threat to its Mission Control Center in Houston.
It may also affect plans to ship a shuttle external fuel tank from NASA's manufacturing facility near New Orleans in time to support an emergency rescue mission, should Atlantis sustain Columbia-like damage during launch.
Columbia was hit by a piece of foam insulation that fell off its fuel tank during launch.
Damage from the impact triggered the shuttle's breakup over Texas as it flew through the atmosphere for landing on February 1, 2003. All seven astronauts aboard died.
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