FRUSTRATED Nasa and Italian Space Agency managers were searching for reasons why a tether broke on Sunday, sending an Italian satellite spinning lost into space, taking with it hopes for a $440 million mission.
Mission managers said it was not likely the 12.5 mile (20 km) long tether was hit by a tiny meteorite, but they said they could not speculate further.
Five hours after they began reeling it out into space, Columbia's crew watched in dismay as the long tether that held the Italian satellite suddenly snapped off near the boom on which it was attached to the shuttle.
The loss of the satellite, still trailing its long tether, shocked mission managers and the crew because the deployment had been smoothly. The satellite been reeled more than 12 miles (k km)from the spaceship In 1992, a similar experiment failed when the long wire snagged on a bolt and was unable to reel out to its full length.
"If you don't get your nose bloodied, you're not in the game," Mr Chuck Shaw, the lead flight director, said. "We got our nose bloodied this time."
The mishap was the second failure suffered by the Italian satellite designed with the idea of generating electricity by dragging the apparatus and its cable through the Earth's magnetic field.