Mission managers planned to decide on the Friday launch strategy after completing an assessment of the surge today, Wayne Hale, NASA's shuttle program manager, said.

The space agency has until Friday to launch the 11-day Atlantis mission before it would postpone the already long-delayed assembly mission to the international space station until late September or early October. Under a previous agreement, NASA would wait while the Russians procede with the Sept. 18 launch of a Soyuz spacecraft with a new two-man resident crew for the station.

"I'm very hopeful and certainly believe there is an opportunity to launch Friday, but we need some satisfactory answers to some of our engineering questions," Hale said. "We want to fly a good mission, not just a safe mission. To have a successful mission we need all three of our fuel cells working."

The irregularity was traced to one of three power supply sources for the fuel cell's coolant system. A power loss could cause the generator to overheat, forcing a shutdown. With a lack of power, mission managers would then be faced with a decision to cut short the shuttle's mission.

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