NASA delays shuttle launch, space station's relocation

— -- A scheduled move of the International Space Station today has been delayed until March after a relocation in January went awry, the space agency said Tuesday. NASA also postponed a launch of space shuttle Discovery.

The shuttle was to visit the station Feb. 14, but technical worries about Discovery prompted NASA to delay the blastoff until no earlier than Feb. 19.

Discovery will carry a new crewmember and solar panels to the station.

The decision to delay moving the station is likely to push back a scheduled March 25 launch of a Russian spacecraft ferrying two new residents to the station, space station program manager Mike Suffredini said Tuesday.

Last month, rockets were commanded to fire to move the space station as usual, but because of erroneous commands sent to the rockets, they cut off so suddenly that the station shook vigorously, NASA said. The station is regularly repositioned to maintain its altitude above the Earth and to meet visiting spacecraft.

The vibration was so strong that the three station residents alerted Mission Control. Engineers were concerned about whether the jostling weakened the station's joints and solar panels. A NASA video taken by a camera inside the station shows the interior shaking as if it were a ship on a violent sea.

Engineers found that the station had not been harmed, but managers opted to delay the next relocation of the station until March so calculations could be double-checked, Suffredini said.

The decision "gave (engineers) time to take a deep breath and make sure their analysis is correct," Suffredini said.

Although the shaking did not cut the space station's intended lifetime of 15 years, its total lifetime has been shortened because of extra stress on its components, Suffredini said. NASA has no solid plans to make use of the station after 2015. However, other members of the international partnership building and operating the $100 billion facility want to keep it in use longer.

A significant cut in the station's total lifetime would likely upset the other partners. Countries such as Japan want to perform enough scientific research on the station to recoup the billions of dollars they have invested in the still-incomplete facility.