Leak fixed, Endeavour ready for liftoff today

WASHINGTON: NASA was on course to finish repairs to launch the shuttle Endeavour today after its scheduled mission to the space station last week was postponed because of a gas leak.

"We're inside 24 hours of launch attempt number 2," the crew's commander, Mark Polansky, wrote yesterday on the micro-blogging website Twitter.

The next attempted blast-off for shuttle to the International Space Station was set for 5:40 am EDT (5:40 pm Beijing time) today from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the US space agency said in an earlier statement.