"The team did a great job to isolate where (the cutting engine sensor) failure were (so that) the failure would not occur again," Bill Gerstenmayer, deputy administrator for space programs told reporters Wednesday.

Gerstenmayer said that as "we head for the 7th of February for launch and we continue to follow the radiator retract hose over the next couple of days; there is a lot of work out to be done over the next days and we reconvene on Saturday to see if we are still on track for the 7th."

Shuttle program manager Wayne Hale added: "I am feeling very positive that we'll come to a good conclusion on this, but we have to do our work here and make sure that we know what we are doing before going to fly this vehicule"

Two astronauts aboard the orbiting ISS on Wednesday replaced an electric motor on one of three solar wings that provide power to the station during a seven-hour-long spacewalk, NASA said.

The 90.8-kilogram (200-pound) Bearing Motor Roll Ring Module (BMRRM), called the "broom," drives the starboard solar wings as they tilt along their axis to follow the sun for optimal power generation. It broke down on December 8.

After Columbus is delivered another shuttle mission in mid-March to deliver the Kibo Japanese laboratory.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration aims to complete the construction of the orbiting station, planned as a jumping-off point for deeper space exploration, by September 30, 2010, when it is due to take its three space shuttles out of service.

It is planning a dozen more shuttle missions to complete the ISS and to repair the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope.

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