WASHINGTON, Dec. 6 (S.K) -- The next launch attempt of the U.S. space shuttle Atlantis will be no earlier than Saturday to give engineers "more time "to solve the faulty fuel sensors, NASA TV said Thursday.

Currently, Atlantis is rescheduled to launch at 3:43 p.m. EST (2043 GMT) on Saturday, according to LeRoy Cain, chairman of NASA's shuttle mission management team.

Atlantis is originally scheduled to launch at 4:31 p.m. EST (2131 GMT) on Thursday. Just several hours prior to the target launch time on Thursday, fuel tank sensor glitch poped up, which prompted NASA shuttle managers to scrub Thursday's launch attempt, targeting a launch attempt on Friday.

However, after an intensive evaluation, NASA top officials decided to postpone the shuttle's launch by another 24 hours. "We need more time," said Cain at a press conference late Thursday from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Given the added time, NASA engineers will try to figure out what was wrong and resolve the trouble. Two of four fuel tank sensors at the bottom of the liquid hydrogen portion of Atlantis' external tank appear to be malfunctioning. NASA flight rules only allow one sensor to fail without affecting a planned launch.

The weather conditions are slightly less favorable for Saturday's launch with a 40-percent chance of weather prohibiting launch, said NASA's weather officer Chris Lovett.

Atlantis' STS-122 mission is NASA's fourth and last shuttle flight in 2007, which will deliver the European-built Columbus laboratory to the International Space Station.

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