Space Shuttle Liftoff Delayed

BBC News reports:

Nasa has delayed the launch of its Endeavour shuttle by at least 48 hours because of technical problems in the last hours before lift-off.

The orbiter is being held on the ground while engineers investigate a hitch with the vehicle's onboard heaters.

The youngest of America's reusable orbiters is set to deliver a $2bn (£1.2bn) particle physics experiment to the International Space Station (ISS).

US President Barack Obama was due to attend the lift-off in Florida.

Also present at the Kennedy Space Center is Endeavour commander Mark Kelly's wife, Gabrielle Giffords, the Arizona politician shot in the head by a gunman in January.

The lift-off had been targeted for 1547 local time (1947 GMT; 2047 BST), but was postponed just after midday.

Kelly and his crew had suited up and were making their way to the shuttle. By tradition, the "astrovan" stops briefly outside of Kennedy's launch control centre before moving on down to the pad, but on this occasion the vehicle pulled in front of the building and parked.

The "scrub" was called moments later.

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