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WASHINGTON (AFP) – The start of the US expanse shuttle Endeavour has been delayed for a ordinal time, until at small May 16, as engineers try to mend an electrical problem, NASA declared Friday.

"NASA managers met Friday salutation and determined expanse shuttle Endeavour module start no earlier than Monday, May 16 at 8:56 am," the expanse authority said.

Technicians module move to repair and retest the electric circuitry that caused NASA to postpone the start on Apr 29 inferior than three hours before liftoff, it said.

The May 16 start is supposed to be the US expanse program's second-to-last shuttle flight to the International Space Station, followed by Atlantis in June. After that, the 30-year-old shuttle information module end.

The flaw has been derived to a power problem in the aftermost load curb assembly-2 (ALCA-2), a incase of switches that curb electrical flow to heaters that ready fuel lines from freezing in orbit.

The example was replaced on Wednesday. Since then, technicians hit been running a battery of tests on the incase and module move to do so over the weekend.

NASA has scheduled a press conference Monday at 3 pm (19H00 GMT) to provide an update.

The six astronauts, including Italian Roberto Vittori of the dweller Space Agency, returned to their home humble in Houston, Texas early Sun to move preparations for the launch.

Endeavour module circularize a $2-billion, seven-ton particle physics detector, the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer-2, which module be left at the expanse send to scour the aggregation for dark matter and antimatter.

The 14-day mission, famous as STS-134, is to be commanded by US traveler Mark Kelly, whose wife, US legislator Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona, is sick from a shot harm to the nous sustained in January.

Giffords was allowed by her rehab doctors in metropolis to control to Florida to check the planned Apr 29 launch, and she is expected to return again for the incoming attempt, her office said.

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