14 DAY TRIAL // Officials with the American space agency have confirmed May 16 as the launch date for space shuttle Endeavour's final mission. At the same time, the launch of shuttle Atlantis has been delayed to July, although an exact takeoff date is currently unknown.
Endeavour was originally supposed to launch to the International Space Station (ISS) on April 19, but a series of delays saw the takeoff being delayed by nearly a month. This particular mission, dubbed STS-134, is its final one ever.
The spacecraft is carrying the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) particle detector, as well as a host of other supplies for the six-astronaut crew of Expedition 27 crew aboard the orbital facility.
The reason why it could not launch on April 29 is because engineers at the Kennedy Space Center discovered a hardware glitch affecting the Load Control Assembly-2 (LCA-2), an electrical switchbox in the aft compartment of the shuttle that is responsible for distributing power to nine subsystems.
Following the launch scrub, just a few hours ahead of T-0, KSC engineers worked around the clock to repair the LCA-2, and to retest all the systems that depend on it. Everything appears to be in order now.
As such, NASA mission managers decided to launch the spacecraft on May 16, at 8:56 am EDT (1256 GMT). Endeavour is already perched on the Launch Pad 39A facility, awaiting its six-astronaut crew.
“Right now, we’re in good shape. Endeavour’s looking good, the team is upbeat. I went to the meeting this morning and they’re ready to go,” explained the shuttle launch director, Mike Leinbach.
“Hopefully, this time the heaters will work and we’ll be able to launch on time next Monday morning,” he went on to say in a May 9 briefing, Universe Today reports.
“We’ve replaced everything except the heaters, and we’ve wrung those out with at least five separate checks and full functionals afterwards and now have extremely high confidence that the problem is no longer on the ship or in any of the electronics,” added Mike Moses.
The expert holds an appointment as the shuttle launch integration manager at the Kennedy Space Center. Endeavour is scheduled to spend more than 14 days in space. During STS-134, astronauts are scheduled to carry out 4 spacewalks.
In the event that the shuttle cannot launch on Monday, the window of opportunity remains opened until May 26. Due to this delay, Atlantis will not be launch on June 28, as the original flight manifest showed.