Piggy-backed on a specially modified Boeing 747, the shuttle took off Friday from Edwards Air Force Base in California, where it landed August 9 after its first space mission since the shuttle Columbia disaster in 2003.

The two aircraft stopped overnight at a military base in Louisiana and were scheduled to fly on to Florida on Saturday.

But weather conditions along the route forced the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to put off the final flight until Sunday, when conditions would be reassessed.

"Potential weather issues early this afternoon at Kennedy would violate the vehicle's stringent flight weather criteria," NASA said.

Normally, the jet that ferries the shuttle flies 100 miles (161 kilometers) behind another aircraft, a "Pathfinder" KC-135, which assesses the weather conditions for the hazardous flight.

On Thursday, NASA said there would be no more shuttle missions into space until March 2006 at the earliest, scrubbing the next launch date originally slated for September.

Shuttle engineers need more time to fix the problem of foam insulation peeling off the craft's huge external fuel tank during launch -- which marred the recent Discovery mission and doomed the Columbia orbiter in 2003.

"From an overall standpoint, we think really March 4 is the timeframe we are looking at," said NASA associate administrator for space operations Bill Gerstenmaier. "The teams are making very good progress. But we're still not complete."

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