Cape Canaveral, Fla. ? NASA is targeting next fall for its next space shuttle launch, saying there are too many post-Columbia repairs to fly any sooner.

Senior space agency officials decided Friday to aim for a launch in September 2004 for Atlantis. That date could slip even further into next year or even into 2005, depending on the progress of the shuttle repair work.

NASA had been using next March as a planning date for the first shuttle flight after the Columbia disaster.

“We’re going to be very much driven by milestones and by the content that we have to accomplish here,” said Bill Readdy, the head of NASA’s human spaceflight program.

Readdy said the work involved coming up with astronaut repair kits for the shuttle’s outer thermal layer, redesigning the fuel tank so insulating foam did not break off and building an extension boom for the shuttle robot arm to conduct in-orbit surveys of the entire ship.

“I can’t tell you whether or not we’re going to have more (repairs) creep in over time, whether we’re going to come up on some technical hurdles,” Readdy said. “I can almost guarantee that this is going to be a long, uphill climb back to return to flight. But I’ll guarantee you that we’re getting an awful lot smarter about this.”