The space shuttle Endeavour and its seven-astronaut crew will have to wait at least one more day before launching into orbit after a last-minute glitch thwarted a Saturday morning launch attempt.
A gaseous hydrogen leak was discovered while the shuttle's fuel tank was loading in preparation for Endeavour's planned launch today from Pad 39A here at NASA's Kennedy Space Center a 7:17 p.m. EDT (1117 GMT).
A similar leak thwarted the space shuttle Discovery's STS-119 launch in March, though that issue was eventually fixed and the shuttle launched successfully.
Weather forecasts predicted a pristine 90 percent chance of good flight conditions for today's launch attempt.
If the glitch can be fixed soon, shuttle and its STS-127 astronaut crew can try again to lift off no earlier than Sunday morning at 6:51 a.m. EDT (1051 GMT), again with near perfect weather anticipated. The potential for thick clouds over the launch area are a concern. Space shuttles cannot fly through heavy cloud cover because it can trigger lightening during liftoff, NASA officials have said.
Commanded by veteran shuttle flyer Mark Polansky, Endeavour's seven-astronaut crew will launch toward the International Space Station carrying a Japanese-built porch for the outpost's massive Kibo laboratory. The marathon 16-day mission will also ferry rookie NASA astronaut Tom Kopra to the station to replace Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata, who has lived aboard the orbiting lab since late March. Wakata is Japan's first long-duration astronaut and has watched over his country's $1 billion Kibo laboratory at the station.
Set to launch spaceward aboard Endeavour with Polansky and Kopra are STS-127 pilot Doug Hurley and mission specialists Chris Cassidy, Julie Payette, Tom Marshburn and Dave Wolf. Payette represents the Canadian Space Agency, while the rest are NASA astronauts. Five challenging spacewalks and challenging robotic arm work that will require three space cranes, two on the station and one on Endeavour, are planned.
Kopra is beginning a three-month mission to the space station as a flight engineer on the outpost's six-man Expedition 20 crew. He will join two Russians, another American and astronauts from Belgium and Canada on what is the station's first full six-person crew.
Endeavour's 16-day mission will mark NASA's third shuttle flight of the year and the second space station construction flight of 2009. A May space shuttle mission aboard Atlantis flew astronauts to the Hubble Space Telescope to perform a successful final overhaul.
NASA has until June 15 to launch the shuttle before standing down to allow two unmanned lunar spacecraft to launch toward the moon on June 17 from the nearby Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. If the mission is unable to launch in June, NASA can try again on July 11.
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