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Cape Canaveral -- NASA called off Thursday's launch of space shuttle
Atlantis after a pair of fuel gauges in its big external tank failed
to work properly, a recurring problem ever since the Columbia
disaster. Now managers are hoping to launch the shuttle on Saturday.
Preliminary indications were that the problem might be with an
open circuit rather than the gauges themselves perhaps a spliced
line or bad connector which would be easier to fix. Mission managers
spent several hours in meetings discussing how to best proceed with
the countdown. They decided to forgo a Friday launch attempt to give
engineers more time to figure out what was wrong and resolve the
trouble.
Launch director Doug Lyons said he was hopeful the launch team
would get another crack at getting Atlantis off the pad before the
end of next week. If the shuttle can't launch by next Thursday or
Friday, NASA would have to wait until early January to launch
Atlantis.
The fuel tank sensors are part of a critical backup system to
ensure that the shuttle's three main engines don't shut down too
soon or too late during liftoff, a potentially catastrophic problem.
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