Due to time considerations, the replacement hard disk NASA wanted to rush to Russia for launch on the Soyuz to the International Space Station (ISS) won't be going anywhere for awhile.

"We decided with the Soyuz launching, when it was we could not get a hard drive over to launch on [the spacecraft]," said Bill Gerstenmaier, the deputy ISS program manager.

The hardware, still in NASAs Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, is being prepared for a ride up to the station on an unmanned Progress freighter targeted for launch about May 20, Gerstenmaier said.

The Boeing-provided hard drive, built by Honeywell, was to be shipped to the Baikonur launch site in Kazakhstan as part of a massive troubleshooting effort being coordinated by ground engineers and flight controllers at JSC.

On Wednesday, the ISS became plagued by computer problems, throwing the Soyuz launch timetable into flux.

All three of the stations main U.S. command-and-control computers crashed Wednesday, stalling work being carried out at the outpost by its three resident tenants and the visiting crew of shuttle Endeavour. Exactly what caused the other two computers to shut down remains a mystery.

Only one of those computers since has been brought back on line. A bid to power up a second computer failed Friday after a new load of software was installed into the machine and the station crew attempted to reboot it.