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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) - NASA officials decided Saturday to delay the launch of space shuttle Atlantis by 24 hours to give engineers more time to determine whether one of the most powerful lightning strikes ever at a Kennedy Space Center launch pad caused any problems.
The launch, planned for Sunday, now won't happen until at least Monday. It was the first time a lightning strike at the launch pad had caused a shuttle launch delay.
The lightning Friday didn't hit the shuttle — it struck a wire attached to a tower used to protect the spacecraft from such strikes at the launch pad — but it created a lightning field around the vehicle, NASA managers said.
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