Nasa engineers were set to work through the weekend to try to resolve a technical hitch that led to Endeavour’s final space voyage being dramatically called off with three and a half hours to spare.Shuttle commander Mark Kelly and his crew, who had been on route to the launch pad in Nasa’s silver ‘Astrovan’, under helicopter escort, were suddenly spun round mid-journey and sent back to quarters after a problem cropped up with the shuttle's hydraulic systems during final preparations at Kennedy Space Centre, Florida.
The hitch brought disappointment for hundreds of thousands of people who had turned out around the Cape Canaveral area to witness the launch, which is set to be Endeavour’s last.
The 19-year-old orbiter is set for retirement following this mission, which has been postponed until at least Monday.
'It’s unfortunate for the Discovery team and Mark Kelly and his crew, but today the orbiter isn’t ready to fly and, as we say in this business, we won’t fly before we are ready,' said Nasa launch director Mike Leinbach.
'It’s the nature of our business. We’ll fly no orbiter before her time and to
day she just wasn’t ready to go.”
The postponement - known to Nasa as a 'scrub' - also dealt a blow to the families of the six-strong crew, who had assembled at Kennedy Space Centre to watch the launch alongside President Barack Obama and his family.
Among them was Gabrielle Giffords, 40, the congresswoman wife of Cdr Kelly, who was shot through the brain by a 22-year-old gunman at a constituency event in Arizona in January. Read More
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