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<div class="inside-copy">CAPE CANAVERAL — NASA administrator Mike Griffin is hinting that the next space shuttle mission is likely to slide a couple days, possibly putting a crimp in the agency's tight launch schedule for the rest of the year.</div><p class="inside-copy">Officially, Discovery's flight to deliver the Kibo science laboratory to the International Space Station remains on the schedule to launch May 25.</p><p> </p><p class="inside-copy">The external tank for that mission arrived at the Kennedy Space Center Wednesday several days late, though managers were saying this week it was still possible to launch on May 25.</p><p class="inside-copy">Griffin measured the potential delay as a "few days." He told reporters who were concerned about the possible schedule conflict between the Discovery launch and the Mars Phoenix landing — now both scheduled for May 25 — that they'd be able to cover both events.</p><p class="inside-copy">The Mars Phoenix landing will be monitored from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California; the probe will be searching the ice-rich soil of the Martian arctic for complex organic molecules — signs of life. The shuttle, of course, takes off from Florida.</p><p class="inside-copy">"You can manage it with a roundtrip ticket," Griffin said.</p><p class="inside-copy">Griffin and his managers also continued to acknowledge some possible delay in the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope shuttle mission currently scheduled for late August, but that it was too soon to be specific</p><p class="inside-copy"> </p><p class="inside-copy">http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/space/2008-03-27-shuttle-launch-delay_N.htm</p> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>