Loose cables delay shuttle mission until February

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (CNN) -- NASA officials Monday delayed Friday's scheduled launch of the space shuttle Atlantis after finding some solid rocket booster cables were loose.

The boosters provide the main thrust to lift the space shuttle. The cables in question carry the signal to the boosters to separate from the shuttle at two minutes into flight.

"Obviously if they don't separate, you've got a major problem," said NASA spokesman George Diller.

Diller said the problem was discovered after "wiggle tests" on all cables systemwide, in which technicians wiggle the cables to check for any break in signal continuity. "You're checking for a loose wire, basically," he said.

Four cables failed the test, indicating a break in signal, "which was enough to give us pause," Diller said.

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"It becomes a 'criticality one,' which means that if there's any question, it shouldn't fly," he added. "The safety of the shuttle and the crew is in question. You can't launch until you can prove it is safe, and we can't prove that."

Diller said NASA plans to roll Atlantis back from the launch pad Friday and do more testing over the weekend. Barring any further problems, Atlantis would roll back to the pad around January 25 and launch on February 6.

Atlantis and its five-member crew were scheduled to take off Friday to deliver the U.S. laboratory module Destiny to the International Space Station. Destiny is the first laboratory to be delivered and is the centerpiece of the ISS, where a resident crew will perform science experiments in the near-zero gravity of space, according to NASA.

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NASA Shuttle Orbiter Atlantis (OV-104)
Kennedy Space Center

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