NASA plans to push back its target for launching the next space shuttle from March to May as it tries to fix a problem with insulating foam that falls off the spacecraft's fuel tank, officials said on Friday according to Reuters. The agency had been hoping to resume flights in March but technical issues with the tanks, coupled with work interruptions caused by Hurricane Katrina, likely will delay launches until later in the spring, officials said. Foam falling off the shuttle's external fuel tanks has been a problem for years but until shuttle Columbia's disintegration in February 2003, the U.S. space agency did not stop flying the fleet to fix the problem. A chunk of foam that fell from the tank during Columbia's launch hit and damaged the ship's wing, causing it to break up and kill seven astronauts as it was coming in to land. NASA spent more than $1.5 billion fixing the tank and implementing other safety upgrades. But the foam problem reappeared during Discovery's launch on July 26 on NASA's first shuttle flight since the Columbia accident, prompting the agency to ground the fleet. --more 2314 Local Time 2014 GMT
