CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) -- An alarm went off inside space shuttle Endeavour's cockpit minutes before Thursday's planned liftoff, forcing NASA to delay its first space station construction flight.
By the time launch controllers figured out what was wrong and concluded they could launch safely, they had run out of time and Endeavour was grounded for another day. They missed the cutoff by only one to two seconds.Launch director Ralph Roe, while disappointed, was convinced his team did the right thing. He said they would try again Friday.
"We want to err on the conservative side," Roe said. "We don't want to launch with something we don't understand."
The master alarm -- a pair of rectangular red lights -- began flashing and beeping about 4 1/2 minutes before the scheduled pre-dawn launch. Unsure of what caused it, shuttle managers counted down to the 31-second mark while discussing the problem.
Endeavour's pilots reported that the alarm sounded right around the time the shuttle hydraulic power units were turned on. But launch controllers quickly determined that one of the three units had experienced a momentary dip in pressure, and so they counted down 12 more seconds before having to give up for the day.
"Please cut off," a launch controller urged his colleagues.