Owing to a malfunction detected during routine testing, the Friday launch of NASA’s WISE - Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer – has been delayed till Monday. It is also highly probable that unfavorable weather conditions predicted in California might further push back the launch of the space telescope from California’s Vandenberg Air Force Base.

A NASA statement said that the problem discovered in a steering engine, will be fixed by the space agency crews, who will remove and replace a suspect component that caused the reported anomaly.

Designed to create an extremely exhaustive map of the spot comets and asteroids that could pose a threat to life on Earth, WISE is part of the US space agency’s infrared sky-mapping mission.

Going by the launch plan of the rocket, it would first head south, then go over the California coastline, and swerve out over the Pacific Ocean. Once the unmanned WISE is in orbit, it will use an infrared camera to expectedly map everything in the universe - from asteroids close to the Earth to distant galaxies packed with stars.

About the sky-mapping mission, chief mission manager Edward Wright said: “The last time we mapped the whole sky at these particular infrared wavelengths was 26 years ago. The old all-sky infrared pictures were like impressionist paintings—now we'll have images that look like actual photographs.”