Cape Canaveral: NASA has postponed the launch of space shuttle Endeavour until Monday due to technical problems, Xinhua reported.
'Shuttle Endeavour's launch now no earlier than Monday at 2.33 p.m. EDT (1833 GMT),' NASA said on Friday. 'Engineers need that time to troubleshoot an issue that resulted in today's launch scrub.'
During Friday's countdown, engineers detected a failure in one of two heater circuits associated with Auxiliary Power Unit (APU) 1. Heaters are required to keep the APUs' hydrazine from freezing on orbit.
Endeavour's 14-day mission will deliver the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer-2 (AMS) to the International Space Station.
AMS, a particle physics detector, is designed to search for various types of unusual matter by measuring cosmic rays.
Its experiments are designed to help researchers study the formation of the universe and search for evidence of dark matter, strange matter and antimatter.
The mission will feature four spacewalks to do maintenance work and install new components. These are the last scheduled spacewalks by shuttle crew members. IANS
