Faulty Heater May Delay Shuttle Mission Further
FLORIDA
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With Mission Control back in operation, NASA aimed for a launch today of the shuttle Atlantis, but a new problem threatened to further delay the flight. A heater in a water-dump line was running too hot aboard Atlantis, and engineers scrambled to gauge the effect on the 11-day mission.
The space station assembly mission already has been delayed nearly seven weeks, first by cracked fuel lines that grounded the entire shuttle fleet and then by Hurricane Lili, which forced an unprecedented shutdown last week of Mission Control at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. If the problem controller setting has to be replaced, officials said, Atlantis would face a delay of several days.
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