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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Shuttle Endeavour and a U.S.-Russian crew will blast off for the International Space Station Friday -- if, that is, mission managers decide it's safe to dock the ship there despite the presence of a Russian cargo carrier that's not firmly linked to the outpost.
The bug-shaped Progress space freighter docked at the station Wednesday, but a piece of debris prevented a secondary set of latches from firmly linking the supply ship to its station berthing port.
Engineers with both NASA and the Russian Aviation and Space Agency think Endeavour can safely dock at the station anyway but mission managers decided to delay the shuttle launch a day so that a more extension analysis of the problem can be done.
"We have agreed with the Russians to take another day to make sure everybody is comfortable with the situation," said Kelly Humphries, a spokesman for NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.The planned launch, consequently, has been tentatively rescheduled for 7:18 p.m. EST Friday (0018 GMT Saturday). The weather outlook for launch, meanwhile, is almost perfect. Meteorologists say there is a 90 percent chance conditions will be acceptable for flight.
The crew now onboard the station, meanwhile, might conduct a spacewalk to clear the small piece of debris, which likely is a loose wire.
Russian cosmonauts Vladimir Dezhurov and Mikhail Turin likely would perform the spacewalk Dec. 3, which would come during the midst of the shuttle's planned weeklong stay at the station.
Mission managers are trying to determine whether an excursion could be added to an already busy schedule that's been laid out for the joint shuttle-station crews.
Endeavour had been scheduled to blast off from Kennedy Space Center at 7:41 p.m. EST Thursday (0041 GMT Friday) on a mission to ferry a new crew to the station and then return to Earth with the outpost's current tenants.
Flying up on Endeavour with four shuttle astronauts: Russian station commander Yuri Onufrienko and two American flight engineers, Daniel Bursch and Carl Walz.
Returning to Earth on the shuttle: current station skipper Frank Culbertson and his two cosmonaut colleagues, Dezhurov and Turin, the three of whom have been living and working aboard the outpost since August.
Endeavour's launch will be the first for NASA since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on America. Air Force officials said heightened security would remain in place for the planned launch Friday.
An expansive "no-fly zone" around NASA's coastal spaceport, meanwhile, also will remain in place until after the shuttle launch. Three local airports, consequently, will remain closed but commercial traffic will continue from major Florida airports, including Orlando International and Melbourne International.
A launch Friday would lead to a Dec. 11 shuttle landing here at KSC, which for Culbertson and his colleagues would cap a 121-day stay in space.
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