The US space shuttle Discovery's December 11 takeoff has been delayed a few hours while a cable is replaced and will occur late in the day, NASA said Tuesday.
The glitch was not expected to hamper the craft's mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope, the agency said.
Discovery is now set to lift off at 11:42 p.m. (0442 GMT Sunday), according to George Diller, a spokesman for the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
This is the fifth delay for the mission, which was originally scheduled to take off in mid-October.
During a routine inspection of the shuttle on its launch pad, engineers found a three-millimeter gash on a cable cover in one of the principal motors, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration said in a statement. The agency chose to replace the cable, delaying take-off.
The astronauts arrived at the center Monday evening and are "in a good mood" despite the many delays, the spokesman said.
Discovery will carry seven astronauts into space, two of which are with the European Space Agency (ESA), Claude Nicollier of Switzerland and Jean-Francois Clervoy of France. During the 10-day mission, the astronauts will do four space walks, each lasting six hours.
The mission became urgent after a gyroscope failed on the Hubble, taking it out of commission. Four of the six gyroscopes on Hubble have failed in all. A minimum of three gyroscopes is necessary for the telescope to effectively gather information.
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