NASA targeting late Friday for shuttle launch try

— -- NASA is scrubbing a planned early Friday launch for shuttle Discovery and seven astronauts to give engineers and managers more time to analyze an apparent valve failure that triggered a launch scrub earlier this week.

The agency had originally scheduled a 12:22 a.m. launch. Instead, NASA will shoot for launch about 24 hours later, at 11:59 p.m. ET Friday.

NASA also would have launch windows at 11:33 p.m. Saturday and 11:11 p.m. Sunday.

It will be the space agency's third attempt to send Discovery to the international space station. Thunderstorms ruined the first launch attempt early Tuesday morning.

NASA must launch Discovery by Sunday for the astronauts to complete their station outfitting mission and depart in advance of the debut launch Sept. 10 of a robotic Japanese cargo carrier.

The supplies and equipment being hauled to the station by Discovery and the Japanese freighter are critical to maintaining a full staff of six on the outpost.

The most prominent payload is NASA's new $5 million treadmill, which is named after Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert. He said in a recorded message that he couldn't be prouder that his treadmill soon will be installed at the space station "to help finally slim down all those chubby astronauts."

"Let's face it, being weightless is mostly just a desperate bid to get away from that bathroom scale every morning," Colbert said. "But you guys and gals are ambassadors to the universe. Don't make us look bad. Put down the astronaut ice cream, tubby. Tubby, tubby, two-by-four, couldn't fit through the air lock door."

Colbert campaigned earlier this year to have a space station room named after him. He won the online vote, but NASA went with Tranquility, the name of the dry lunar sea in which Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed 40 years ago this summer. As a consolation prize, Colbert got the treadmill. It's full name is Combined Operational Load Bearing External Resistance Treadmill; it will fly up in more than 100 pieces and won't be put together until sometime next month.