Faulty Valve Forces Fifth Delay of Shuttle Launching

Mechanical and weather demons continued to haunt the space shuttle Columbia on Wednesday, forcing NASA officials to abandon efforts to launch the ship and its frustrated seven-man crew today.

NASA spokeswoman Sarah Keegan said that the launching had been reset for “no earlier than Friday morning” after problems developed with a sticky valve in a fuel line of the orbiter’s main propulsion system. Engineers replaced parts in the valve assembly after the problem was discovered Tuesday, but the component still was not shutting properly, Keegan explained.

Even if technicians work out the mechanical bugs, the takeoff could be hampered by high winds and rain squalls that rolled into central and eastern Florida Wednesday and were expected to linger through Friday.

The latest delay was the fifth since the mission’s original launching date, Dec. 18.

Crew members, including Rep. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) and Franklin R. Chang-Diaz, the first Latino-American scheduled for space flight, flew to Houston after a launching attempt was scrubbed Tuesday and spent Wednesday practicing flight procedures in a shuttle simulator at NASA headquarters. They will return here today for another stab at the real thing if the valve problems are worked out.

Meanwhile, another astronaut team, including New Hampshire schoolteacher Sharon Christa McAuliffe, boarded Columbia’s sister ship, Challenger, and went through a dry run of its scheduled Jan. 23 blastoff. Before McAuliffe climbed into the craft, members of the ground crew handed a big red apple to the social studies instructor. She won a nationwide contest to become the first teacher in space.