spacetoday.net: NASA confirms May 16th launch date for Endeavour

Posted: Tue, May 10, 2011, 6:13 AM ET (1013 GMT)

NASA shuttle managers announced Monday that they have competed repairs to the shuttle Endeavour and set May 16th as the new launch date for the penultimate shuttle mission. Endeavour had been set to launch on April 29th on mission STS-134, but the launch was scrubbed several hours before launch when heaters in one of the orbiter's three APUs failed to turn on. The problem was later traced to a failure in a power controller box in the orbiter, which was replaced last week. Managers said while they could not track down the root cause for the failure, they have replaced all the components involved in the failure and tested that they are working. The launch is now scheduled for 8:56 am EDT (1256 GMT) Monday. Those delays have also pushed back the final shuttle mission, STS-135, from late June to early to mid July, although no new launch date for that mission has been set.