NASA is assessing the damage caused by Hurricane Katrina to its two facilities in the disaster area, anticipating that the damage will delay the next launch of a space shuttle, reports said Thursday.

The US space agency had hoped to launch Discovery in March 2006.

"Right now, we're still addressing what the implications are on the shuttle launch schedule, and if I say I don't know what those are, that's an understatement," said NASA Administrator Michael Griffin on Thursday in a televised address.

Griffin said he believed the next shuttle launch would come before Oct. 2006.

Griffin visited the Michoud facility in the eastern suburbs of New Orleans, Louisiana, and the Stennis Space Center in Mississippi. NASA said in a statement that the Michoud facility "is still mostly isolated due to high water."

The Michoud facility is where the space shuttle's external tank is assembled. The hurricane disrupted NASA's work on preventing a repeat of the insulation foam falling off the fuel tank problem in future launches.

A piece of foam fell during the July launch of Discovery on the US' first shuttle mission since the 2003 Columbia disaster. That piece of foam was similar in size to the one that doomed the Columbia shuttle. The cause of the July foam loss remains unknown.

Before the resumption of shuttle flight, NASA had spent two and a half years and over 1 billion US dollars on ensuring tank safety. The foam incident forced NASA to ground its shuttle fleet once again.

NASA tests its shuttles' main engines at the Stennis Space Center. It said Thursday the damage at the two facilities in Louisiana and Mississippi was primarily to roofs. The damages are estimated to cost at least 1 billion dollars to repair.

Source: Xinhua