After NASA technicians found the cause of Auxiliary Power Unit thermal issue that scrubbed the 29 April launch and decided to remove and replace an entire avionics box, STS-134 launch has been delayed to not earlier than Sunday, May 8th at 12:09 p.m. EDT: AMS-02 has to wait at least one week to begin its travel to the ISS.

In the meanwhile at Houston people from the Collaboration, waiting to start their scheduled 24 hours control shifts are working on software enhancement: a data analysis meeting is foreseen next days.

Also the astronauts came back to Johnson Space Center while at Kennedy Space Center the Pad Rotating Service Structure has been closed again: Endeavour is now covered.

The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS-02) is a state-of-the-art particle physics detector designed to operate as an external module on the International Space Station. It will use the unique environment of space to study the universe and its origin by searching for antimatter, dark matter while performing precision measurements of cosmic rays composition and flux.

AMS is the result of a large international collaboration with a major European participation. It is led by Nobel laureate Samuel Ting and involves about 600 researchers from CERN Member States (Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland) as well as from China, Korea, Mexico, Taiwan, and the United-States.

AMS-02 ready to fly (pic from AMS-02.org)

Source: www. AMS-02.org